By Lee Pfeiffer

Dame Diana Rigg, one of Britain's most esteemed actresses, has died from cancer at age 82. In the course of her career, Rigg conquered the mediums of stage, screen and television. She studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London and received praise for her work in classic theater. Perhaps improbably, she became a pop culture icon when she replaced Honor Blackman on the iconic British TV series "The Avengers" in the 1960s. When Blackman left the show to star as Pussy Galore in the 1964 James Bond film "Goldfinger", Rigg introduced the character of Emma Peel, playing opposite Patrick Macnee's John Steed. She became the most notable early female action star on television, practicing martial arts and often attired in provocative leather outfits. In 1969, Rigg followed in Honor Blackman's footsteps by appearing as the female lead in a James Bond film, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" opposite George Lazenby's 007. The film, considered one of the best of the series, cast Rigg as a countess who marries James Bond, only to be murdered on their wedding day. The movie was notable for its realistic and downbeat ending. Rigg's other feature films include "The Hospital", "The Great Muppet Caper", "Evil Under the Sun" and "Theatre of Blood", a comedic horror film in which she and Vincent Price were memorably co-starred. She thrived on television over the decades, gaining numerous Emmy and BAFTA nominations and winning an Emmy in 1997 for her performance as the evil Mrs. Danvers in "Rebecca". She also won acclaim for her role in the TV production of "Mother Love" opposite David McCallum in 1989. Rigg found late career success on television with an Emmy-nominated role in "Game of Thrones". In theater, she often concentrated on the classics, packing houses on Broadway and the West End. She won a Tony Award in 1994 for her starring role in "Medea".

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“FRIGHTENED OF MAKING THE MOVIE”

By Raymond Benson

Of all the filmmakers throughout the years in which we’ve had cinema, two have had more books written about them than any other director. The first would be Alfred Hitchcock. The second is Stanley Kubrick. The number of tomes that exist for both is overwhelming. For Hitchcock, one can understand the depth of material that can be mined, seeing that Hitchcock made over fifty films. Kubrick, on the other hand, made only thirteen. One would think that no more could be said about the genius Jewish kid from the Bronx who made good… but that would be wrong.

Most of the books about Kubrick deal exclusively with his work, because that’s pretty much all we know about him. Stanley Kubrick was an intensely private person, a family man who carved out a unique life for himself after moving to the U.K. in the 1960s and making his movies there beginning with Lolita (1962). He lived minutes away from the studios where his pictures were shot. Both pre- and post-production was accomplished at his home. Craftsmen, writers, actors, designers—they all came to him for meetings. Kubrick’s movies were family affairs, in that members of his immediate family (his wife and three daughters) all worked at one time or another on the movies, and he kept a close-knit circle of employees who were considered “family.” There were no scandals or personal controversies associated with Kubrick; hence, no “tell-all” hatchet jobs are available. What “biographies” of his personal life that do exist again end up focusing more on the films he made than what he did from day to day.

David Mikics, a Moores Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Houston and columnist for Tablet magazine, has now presented the most recent study of Kubrick’s work. How it differs from previous scholarly publications is that it does include more recent discoveries from the director’s archives that were unearthed since his death in 1999 and the subsequent cataloging of his “stuff” by the University of Arts London and the traveling exhibition that has enjoyed success around the world. For example, there is more discussion about started-and-abandoned projects—at least more titles than this reviewer has seen mentioned before in books (and this reviewer considers himself quite knowledgeable in the subject). Among these titles are H. Rider Haggard’s Viking epic Eric Brighteyes and a film about the game of chess entitled Chess Story.

Mikics does go through Kubrick’s filmography chronologically and offers insightful interpretations of the works mixed with some production histories. Kubrick aficionados who have read other books on the subject may not learn much new, but Mikics manages to come up with some thoughtful analyses. Perhaps the most potent part of the new book is Mikics’ chapter on Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick’s last and arguably most misunderstood final film. Very little has been written about this complex and engrossing picture that still polarizes audiences (arguably, undeservedly!). What Mikics fails to mention—like all other critics of Eyes Wide Shut—is that the movie is an unfinished film. Think about it. Kubrick assembled the completed cut of the film and viewed it for its stars, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, and a couple of Warner Brothers executives. Their responses were extremely positive. Then… Kubrick suffered a massive heart attack and died only a few days after the screening. At this point, the release date for the movie was still four and a half months away! Anyone who has studied Kubrick and his films knows that he edited his pictures up to the day of release and often beyond it (he edited twenty minutes out of 2001 following the premiere, and he edited a coda from The Shining after its opening weekend in North America—and then deleted 25 minutes from it for the U.K. and European release a couple of months later!). This reviewer has no doubt that Kubrick would have continued to work on Eyes Wide Shut, tightening it, trimming it, and reducing its runtime by possibly as much as twenty to thirty minutes.

Still, Mikics offers some interesting interpretations of this final work and how it is indeed such a defining piece of celluloid in Kubrick’s life. He had wanted to make the movie since the 1950s, but he was always being dissuaded (by his third wife, Christiane, for instance) because he “wasn’t old enough yet.” At one point, she is quoted as saying that Kubrick was “frightened of making the film” because it would hit close to his heart. Apparently, it did.

Stanley Kubrick: American Filmmaker is recommended for cinema students and fans of this iconic filmmaker.

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BY HANK REINEKE

Director/co-writer Larry Charles acknowledges it was an employer - the curmudgeon-comedian Larry David, who unwittingly served as the midwife of the Masked and Anonymous project. David’s disinterest in popular music – and rock n’ roll music specifically - was no secret. Cornered and trapped in a one-sided conversation with the passionate and gregarious television writer and music fan Eddie Gorodetsky, the co-creator of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm was anxious to escape the conversation. He suggested to Gorodetsky his interest in discussing the vagaries of Bob Dylan’s mercurial career - and the rock n’ roll world in general - would be better served by engaging in a chat with Curb writer-director Charles. Gorodetsky did just that. He soon discovered both he and Charles were huge Dylan fans, the two discussing the often mysterious singer-songwriter’s career at length.

Although an ardent admirer of Dylan’s music, Charles admitted to sharing no personal relationship with the artist. So it came as some surprise when some time later he would receive a call from one Dylan’s representatives. He was told that the peripatetic troubadour was interested in involving himself with a potential TV project and would he be willing to discuss? Dylan was no stranger to the film business, though the films in which the bard exercised control tended to be artsy mish-mashes of varying interest. Only the D.A. Pennebaker-ministered and celebrated documentary of Dylan’s 1965 tour of England, Dont Look Back (1967), had received any measure of critical and commercial success.

Just as Dylan had subverted Tin Pan Alley song-craft with his folk-song homilies, Dylan’s unreleased television film Eat the Document (1972) and his big screen epic Renaldo & Clara (1978) would playfully toy with the film medium’s editing and writing processes and his own self-created mythos. Charles would describe Dylan as a “protean personality,” someone who realized early on in his life the notion of “self is a construction.” He suggests “Bob Dylan” is simply a self-invented character, one that the singer (born Robert Allen Zimmerman) would shed in personal social interactions.

Charles eagerly agreed to a meeting with Dylan. When the two decided to sit down together to hash out ideas and write, Charles was a bit surprised by Dylan’s interest in conceiving what he described as a “Buster Keaton-style” series of slapstick television programs. As the notorious road-warrior rock legend was playing in excess of one hundred concerts a year between 2000 and 2002, Charles allowed that his interest was not as unusual as it might sound: Dylan would pass a lot of his travel time on his private coach by watching old Jerry Lewis films on the buses’ VHS player. But the idea that Masked and Anonymous was originally conceived as a “Bob Dylan slapstick comedy,” is an interesting one given the singer’s somewhat dour and humorless public persona.

In any event it was this premise that Charles and Dylan would bring to Chris Albrecht, the Chairman of the Board at HBO. Though Albrecht would green-light the project with a measure of enthusiasm – having someone of Bob Dylan’s stature associated with your brand guaranteed a measure of residual hip prestige - the notoriously capricious Dylan almost immediately deferred. Dylan informed Charles that his interest in the slapstick series had passed. He instead offered an idea for a feature-length film project that he suggested they instead write together. Charles was game, acknowledging that anyone deigned to “ride the Bob Dylan train,” was sure to encounter ups and downs due to the songwriter’s mercurial creative shifts. When the pair finally finished their screenplay for Masked and Anonymous, the aforementioned titular masks went on from the very onset. For starters, the pair had to convince the Writer’s Guild to permit the masking of their scripting authorships: Dylan chose the pseudonym “Rene Fontaine,” Charles choosing “Sergei Petrov.”

This new Shout! Factory Blu ray set of Masked and Anonymous generously features a number of Special Features. The most interesting of these are the insights shared by Charles in the 2020 featurette, Behind the Mask: a Look Back at Masked and Anonymous with Director and Co-writer Larry Charles. The passing of time has allowed Charles to ruminate and assess the impact of the often-critically savaged film from a less defensive –well, perhaps a better descriptive would be “protective” –posturing. Charles would describe Masked and Anonymous, not unreasonably, as “an apocalyptic, sci-fi, spaghetti-western, musical-comedy.” In his reminiscence, Charles allows that the script’s “formal language” and portrayal of a future dystopian America might have been too challenging a plow for general audiences. When the film was first released in 2003, the notion of an economy-wrecked U.S.A. on the brink of collapse and in police-state mode seemed wildly fanciful. Sadly, in 2020, this premise sadly seems a more plausible concept.

Mostly ravaged by critics upon its release, the occasionally self-indulgent Masked and Anonymous nevertheless has its moments. There’s little doubt that obsessive Bob Dylan fans will better relate to the anarchic, choppy, and occasionally ponderous circus-atmosphere of the film. In many circumstances, the film serves as a type of celluloid mirror to Dylan’s often bleak song settings and dystopian worldview. Charles believes we can see many of Dylan’s fabled “masks fall” in the course of the film, and some level this is true. But as one critic from Vanity Fair once astutely noted, “Bob Dylan rigs every performance, no matter how direct, with decoys and trip wires. His welcome mat is set above a trapdoor.”

BY TIM MCGLYNN

Criterion has released a Blu-ray edition of one of the best science fiction films from the 1950s or any other decade for that matter.  George Pal’s version of War of the Worlds, directed by Byron Haskin, landed in theaters in 1953 and has become an iconic symbol of alien invasion stories.

H.G. Wells’ novel had already been made famous by Orson Welles’ landmark CBS radio drama in 1938.  The Martian invasion played out as news bulletins concerning an attack on the East Coast by enemy tripod machines armed with a terrifying heat ray and poisonous gas.  With Americans nervous about a possible war in Europe at the time, audiences listening that night were especially vulnerable hearing the fabricated reports of destruction and carnage.  One has to wonder why many of the people glued to their radios didn’t turn to another station for confirmation.

With Alfred Hitchcock and Cecil B. DeMille linked to film adaptations of Wells’ novel at different times, it was producer George Pal who finally brought the story to the screen in 1953.  Pal, an Academy Award winning animator, had already thrilled moviegoers with Destination Moon and When Worlds Collide, both of which were box office successes.  His Puppetoon short from 1942, Tulips Shall Grow, depicted the Nazi invasion of Holland and provided a template for the attack sequences in War of the Worlds.

Featuring a relatively hefty budget of $2 million, Pal funneled most of his resources into the famed special effects depicting the deadly Martian war machines destroying Los Angeles.  An in-house team at Paramount, led by Gordon Jennings and art director Albert Nozaki, designed and built the futuristic swan-like vehicles armed with ferocious heat rays and skeleton beams that lay waste to all military weapons that stood in their way.  Striking miniature work and beautiful paintings by astronomical artist Chesley Bonestell completed the look of this Technicolor masterpiece.

The cast included future Bat Masterson star Gene Barry, beautiful newcomer Ann Robinson and radio actor Les Tremayne. The script was fashioned by Barre Lyndon who transferred the story from Victorian England to modern day California. The three-strip Technicolor photography was supervised by George Barnes and the pulsating music score was composed by Leith Stevens. The unsung heroes of War of the Worlds were the sound effects teams led by Paramount regulars Gene Garvin and Harry Lindgren.  All manner of new sound cues were created for this film and many of these effects are still in use today.

Criterion’s Blu-ray features the 2018 4K restoration produced by Paramount Pictures, and the results are truly spectacular with amazing color saturation and crisp, clear sound.  Errors in registration of the Technicolor strips have been cleaned up and an alternate 5.1  soundtrack has been realized by Star Wars sound designer Ben Burtt.  Purists will be happy to know that the original mono track has been included as an option.

War of the Worlds was filmed in the 1.37 aspect ratio although some theaters were exhibiting it in a matted 1.66 version.  After adjusting my monitor to view this cropped presentation, I found the picture to look cramped and noticed that important information was occasionally lost.  The original stereo tracks are now lost but, according to Ben Burtt, they only provided exaggerated sound effects to the additional speakers.

As a 9 year-old watching War of the Worlds on its’ NBC television premier in 1967, I was terrified and hooked at the same time. Much like experiencing an E-ticket ride at Disneyland, I enjoyed being

scared.  I found the narration by Sir Cedric Hardwicke to be gripping as he described the “rout of civilization" during a montage of destruction.  Through the years I continued to enjoy this film on network and local television broadcasts and at college screenings.  Eventually I owned home video copies in the VHS, CED disc, DVD and now Blu-ray formats.  To say War of the Worlds is my favorite film is an extreme understatement.

BY HANK REINEKE

Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray edition of Calvin Floyd’s documentary In Search of Dracula is the third hard copy to find its way into my collection. I no longer own a copy of that first edition, a VHS tape of dubious origin and purchased at a convention. That was jettisoned when an authorized copy on DVD was issued by Wellspring Media in 2003. Truth be told, I’m not sure a manufacture of a Blu-ray for this particular film is necessarily merited. But it’s here now and will likely displace the DVD sitting on my home video shelf. The circle of life, I suppose.

This quirky and occasionally interesting documentary would make its debut on the small screen, initially produced for exclusive broadcast on Swedish television. But it was a popular and professional enough effort to be later telecast in Great Britain on the B.B.C. The film would make the transition as a genuine cinematic property in 1975 when Samuel M. Sherman’s Independent International Pictures Corporation bought the U.S. distribution rights. The producer would pad the program’s running time to feature-length with a sprinkling of non-essential bits and pieces here and there.

The film was released theatrically in the U.S., playing the New York City metropolitan area in May 1975. This NYC-area engagement lasted little more than a week, mostly playing drive-ins and second-run cinemas throughout the city’s outer boroughs, Long Island and the wilds of New Jersey. Sherman’s ballyhoo newspaper advertising was purposefully misleading. It highlighted Christopher Lee’s participation in the production and referenced “An Open Letter to the Descendants of Count Dracula.” Subsequent ad copy coyly disguised that the film was actually an historical documentary rather than a new Dracula feature.

In any event, the film was not strong enough to stand alone as a potential draw, so it was paired with an appropriate co-feature, albeit movies of previous-release and exhibiting some mileage and history. These co-features would include the like of Hammer’s The Mummy (1959) with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and Al Adamson’s bargain-basement cheapie Blood of Ghastly Horror (1967) with John Carradine. (This second feature made some strategic sense as Sherman was co-producer of the latter film). Sherman is listed here in the revised opening credits of In Search of Dracula as “production consultant.” With all due respect to Mr. Sherman, Floyd’s original documentary was inspired by consulting Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu’s best-selling tome of the same title (New York Graphic Society, 1972). The film, to the best of its ability, attempts to touch on many of the same subjects more thoroughly detailed in that book.

Unfortunately, it does so with only mixed success as director Floyd’s somber narrative tends to meander. The film certainly starts promisingly enough, advising viewers that it was photographed not only “on location” in Transylvania itself (we’re told “Transylvania” translates to the “land beyond the forest”), but also in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Sweden. “All film locations are authentic and historically accurate” a title credit promisingly brags. Indeed, the travelogue snippets of green fields, the Carpathian Mountains, broke-down castles, and small-village folkways are amongst the film’s strongest assets. We’re also treated to somewhat tangential footage documenting a colorful performance by the Romanian Folklore Dance Company and the so-called “mysticism” of a Greek Orthodox Church ceremony.

The real masterstroke of producer/director/composer Floyd was his ability to bring in a favorite cinematic Dracula, Christopher Lee, to narrate and guide viewers through this fractured history lesson. The fact that he was able to convince Lee to do so is surprising in itself. Lee had walked away, somewhat disgruntled, from the Dracula character following his appearance in seven mostly beloved – and mostly profitable - films for Hammer Studios… and an eighth, if less celebrated Dracula movie, for Spanish director Jess Franco (1970). Lee proudly boasts here near the film’s end that his Horror of Dracula (1958) made “eight times its production costs!” for Hammer. For the record, Lee hadn’t totally abandoned his cloaked on-screen vampirism, having also appeared as an ersatz Dracula in such mostly forgotten continental productions as Italy’s Tempi duri per i vampiri (1959) and France’s Dracula Père et Fils (1976). Lee provides narration throughout but also appears on screen - surprisingly “in character” - in several brief vignettes. He’s seen here, in silent footage, as both the (Stoker-described) mustachioed Count Dracula as well as the character’s presumed historical forebear Vlad Tepes (aka “Vlad the Impaler”), the one-time Prince of Wallachia.

It’s unfair to expect an eighty-two minute film to adequately convey the contents of a 300 page book, and director Floyd (along with writer Yvonne Floyd) tries their best to condense and impart information in an educational and entertaining manner. Unfortunately, there’s just not enough running time to discuss any item to satisfaction. We are offered some teachable, if rushed along, informational tidbits along the way. We learn that Bram Stoker, who would first publish his novel Dracula in 1897, never actually visited Transylvania prior to writing. Despite this, Lee ensures, the novelist was “remarkably accurate” in his descriptions as he had studied period maps and guidebooks in careful preparation. There’s a discussion of the origin of vampire legends which, we’re told, originated in Asia before migrating westward to other far-flung places. Stories of vampires eventually traveled to Eastern Europe where they seamlessly filtered into and intertwined with local folklore beliefs. It was in Eastern Europe that tales of vampirism and “the undead” would appear most common.

The film also treats us to tangential, thumbnail case studies and psychological profiles of other infamous - and terribly real - “vampires.” These include Countess Elizabeth Báthory of Hungary (aka Countess Dracula) who, legend has it, bathed in the blood of virgins in an attempt to stay youthful. Then there was the awful Peter Kürten, the “Vampire of Düsseldorf,” a sexual deviant and serial killer who reportedly cannibalized and drank the blood of several of his victims. Another addition to this unpleasant rogue’s gallery was John Haigh, the so-called “Vampire of London.” The delightful Mister Haigh treated his victim’s to acid baths and claimed to have drunk their blood as well.

It’s almost a relief when, somewhere around the sixty-minute mark, Floyd – in a head-scratching manner - segues into an odd sidebar regarding the origins of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein. Its inclusion here is almost totally out of place in this particular documentary but, in hindsight, it did foreshadow Floyd’s next and more ambitious project. This would be the director’s attempt at a dramatic telling of the authentic and original Shelley text “as written.” This feature would subsequently be released to European cinemas in 1977 as the Terror of Frankenstein.

Though no classic, Floyd’s take on Frankenstein – unseen by many until the home video boom made the film more available – is often lauded as the first faithful attempt to follow the novels genuine and more complex storyline. This declaration wasn’t entirely true. In 1973, NBC-TV would broadcast their three and a half hour television drama Frankenstein: The True Story in two parts. So that television production had gotten their first and, quite frankly, did a better job of it. In any event, Calvin Floyd’s Terror of Frankenstein is certainly worth seeking out by film scholars, if only for its oddity.

Unfortunately, Floyd’s In Search of Dracula begins to fall apart near the end as we pass through brief mentions of the nineteenth century literary legacies of such “undead” figures as Le Fanu’s Carmilla and Polidori’s Vampyre. As we enter the age of cinema, we’re treated to an over-long, but time-chewing, excerpt of the public-domain silent classic Nosferatu. Since clips from Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr and Tod Browning’s Dracula (the latter featuring the iconic 1931 performance of Bela Lugosi), were under copyright protection, we’re treated only to a few production stills and a lengthy, and not terribly relevant, excerpt from Lugosi’s appearance in the non-protected 1925 silent drama The Midnight Girl.

In any event, I’m guessing that fans of Sir Christopher Lee and students of the Dracula legend will be compelled to add this film to their collections: as someone who has triple-dipped on this title I completely understand. Others less-obsessed might find the film an outdated celluloid relic, best forgotten. While I’m certainly glad that the film has been made available once again for those interested, I would be dishonest to deem it as an essential study.

This Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu-ray of In Search of Dracula has been transferred from a new 2K master, in a ratio of 1.37:1 and in 1920p x 1080p with DTS monaural sound. The set also features an audio commentary track supplied by film historians Lee Gambin and John Harrison. The set includes a few bonus trailers for other Christopher Lee films available from the Kino Lorber library: The Crimson Cult, The Oblong Box, Scream and Scream Again, Arabian Adventure, and House of Long Shadows.

Sir Alan Parker has died at age 76. The esteemed British filmmaker was known for making highly diverse, acclaimed films. He had received two Oscar nominations for Best Director, the first for "Midnight Express" and the other for "Mississippi Burning". Parker made his feature film directorial debut in 1975 with "Bugsy Malone", an offbeat and inspired send up of old gangster movies starring a cast comprised of child actors including Jodie Foster. His other films include "Fame", "The Commitments", "Pink Floyd- The Wall", "Shoot the Moon", "Angela's Ashes", "Evita", "Angel Heart" and "Birdy". Parker had not directed a film since "The Life of David Gale" in 2003. As news of his death broke, tributes were paid by his peers in the entertainment industry including Andrew Webber, David Putnam and Barbara Broccoli.

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BY FRED BLOSSER

Universal Pictures released three horror films about Paula Dupree, the Ape Woman, as it attempted to refresh its aging portfolio of monster series in the early 1940s. “Captive Wild Woman” debuted in 1943, followed by two sequels, “Jungle Woman” (1944) and “Jungle Captive” (1945). Paula Dupree never made a lasting impact on popular culture as other Universal horror characters did, coming too late in the studio’s 15-year horror run to gain much traction. By 1945, when “Jungle Captive” was dumped onto a double-bill with “The Frozen Ghost,” the cycle was on its last gasp. There was never an Aurora scale-model kit for the Ape Woman in the mid-1960s as there were for the studio’s more famous monsters, and nary a word about Paula when Universal started making noises a few years ago about reviving its trademarked monsters for a new “Dark Universe” film franchise. The “Dark Universe” concept has since tanked. Maybe they should have thought about the Ape Woman. At any rate, even if Paula never made much of a stir in the public imagination at large, she was seriously creepy and unforgettable for us impressionable kids who saw the trilogy on late-night “Shock Watch” TV packages in 1961. Now, Scream Factory has released the Ape Woman series in a new Blu-ray set, “Universal Horror Collection: Volume 5,” its fifth licensed compilation of vintage Universal horror and thriller films. “The Monster and the Girl,” also in the package, is an unrelated 1941 Columbia Pictures melodrama that shares the theme of a killer ape with vengeful human emotions in a noirish 1940s setting. It’s an unexpected fit with the other three pictures, but a good one.

“Captive Wild Woman,” directed by Edward Dmytryk, introduces Paula. Big-game trapper Fred Mason (Milburn Stone) returns from Africa with new lions for the John Whipple Circus. His prize find, though, is a friendly female gorilla, Cheela. A demented but outwardly urbane medical scientist, Dr. Sigmund Walters (the inimitable John Carradine), meets Fred and Cheela through Fred’s fiancee, Beth (Evelyn Ankers), whose sister he is treating for a hormonal disorder in his isolated clinic, the Crestview Sanitarium. Fred proposes to become Cheela’s personal trainer, but the gorilla mysteriously disappears -- stolen by Dr. Walters, who sees unusual potential in the ape’s high level of intelligence. Using hormones from Beth’s sister Dorothy (Martha MacVicar, who later changed her screen name to Martha Vickers) and human brain tissue from another unwilling donor, Dr. Walters secretly transforms Cheela from gorilla into human as a beautiful brunette, whom he calls Paula Dupree (Acquanetta). When Paula saves Fred from an attacking lion by giving the lion her Cheela stare, Fred decides that her uncanny ability would be an asset in his act, having no clue that Paula was once Cheela. It doesn’t hurt her chances in show biz, either, that she looks gorgeous in a sparkly, short-skirted circus outfit. But Paula remembers Cheela’s fondness for Fred, and when she becomes jealous of Beth, her anthropoid tendencies return and she reverts partway to gorilla form.

Undiscriminating audiences in 1943 may not have thought much about the film’s ping-pong between the John Whipple Circus and Crestview Sanitarium. B-movie escapism was B-movie escapism. Nor would they have been bothered by Fred Mason’s lion-taming techniques, which would now fall within PETA’s definition of animal cruelty. As a cost-saving measure, those scenes were recycled from “The Big Cage,” a 1932 Universal production starring Clyde Beatty. For the new footage of Fred in close-up, Milburn Stone’s hair was styled to make him look, not very convincingly, like Beatty. It takes an awfully long time before the Ape Woman actually appears, 45 minutes into the picture’s thrifty 61-minute running time. When she does, it’s in an effective time-lapse scene, Mr. Hyde or Wolf Man style, in which the beautiful Paula grows fangs, develops leathery skin, and finds her hairdo stiffening into a gorilla bouffant. The wonderful Jack P. Pierce makeup almost redeems the delay in bringing the character on stage. The Ape Woman immediately claims a victim in a nighttime home-invasion and murder, reminiscent of the linchpin horror scene featuring Erik the Ape in Universal’s 1932 Bela Lugosi thriller, “Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The aftermath of the killing sets up the crowning scene of the film for John Carradine, when Dr. Walters berates the monster for her indiscretion: “They’ll put you on trial, throw question after question at you,” the great Carradine storms. “You won’t know what anyone’s saying.” The actor delivers the lines with all the sincerity and intensity of a soliloquy from “Macbeth.” Since Paula is still in full Ape Woman mode, the disconnect between what Walters is saying and who he’s saying it to is sublimely surreal. You may not even have to be a fan with warm, half-century-old memories of “Shock Watch” to enjoy “Captive Wild Woman” on those terms.

“Jungle Woman” starts off well with an attack by a half-human figure shown entirely and impressionistically in shadow, but it suffers from the problems often inherent in sequels. Paula Dupree (Acquanetta) comes under the care of kindly Dr. Carl Fletcher (J. Carroll Naish) through circumstances that allow director Reginald LeBorg to reuse footage from “Captive Wild Woman,” including scenes already recycled from “The Big Cage.” This front-loading of familiar footage, combined with a framing story of Dr. Fletcher testifying before a coroner’s jury on a murder charge, gets the story off to a lethargic start after the promising opening scene. Milburn Stone and Evelyn Ankers, returning as Fred and Beth, have more screen time in the recycled footage than they have in LeBorg’s new footage, as witnesses at the coroner’s hearing. As in “Captive Wild Woman,” Paula reverts to murderous Ape Woman form when she becomes jealous of Dr. Fletcher’s daughter Joan (Lois Collier) over the affections of Joan’s fiancee Bob (Richard Davis). “Jungle Woman” shares a 61-minute running time with “Captive Wild Woman,” but it seems a much longer movie.

“PRATFALLS AND A ZOOM SUPPLEMENT”

By Raymond Benson

The brilliance of Preston Sturges’ brilliant screwball comedy aside, what is striking about the new Blu-ray edition of the filmmaker’s 1941 The Lady Eve from The Criterion Collection is the supplement that is a Zoom conversation between Tom Sturges (Preston’s son), filmmakers Peter Bogdanovich, James L. Brooks, and Ron Shelton, and critics Leonard Maltin, Kenneth Turan, and Susan King. While it’s unclear if this is the first acknowledgment of the Covid-19 pandemic in the production of home video supplementary features, this reviewer found the inclusion to be revelatory. How amazing it is to see these personages in the Brady Bunch-style squares all discussing Sturges and the film, and mirroring what many of us are doing while working at home. At one point, Brooks’ internet connection fails and his image freezes. All the others comment that they’ve “lost Jim,” but he returns a few minutes later and resumes the chat. Bogdanovich’s phone rings in the middle of the presentation, yet another sign of the times and how we’re all dealing with the reality that is the spring and summer of 2020.

As for the movie itself… In the year 1940, Hollywood screenwriter Preston Sturges elevated his career to become the first writer/director double threat of the sound era. For a brief five years in the early 40s, his flame burned brightly as he churned out sophisticated screwball comedies that had great wit, intelligence, and a stock company of iconic supporting comic actors—the guys you always recognize but never know their names (actually, they are talents like William Demarest, Eric Blore, Eugene Pallette, Melville Cooper, Janet Beecher, Jimmy Conlin, and Al Bridge, to name a handful who appear in The Lady Eve).

The sub-genre known as “screwball comedy” usually pitted characters of the opposite sex who were from different social statures, and the plot revolves around the man and woman falling in and out of love, and back in again. The Lady Eve is considered one of the prime examples. It is full of charm, sophistication, and slapstick. The number of pratfalls performed by Henry Fonda—Henry Fonda!—is astonishing, and he does them so well! He plays Charles Pike, the wealthy son of an ale manufacturer (the always hilarious, frog-throated Eugene Pallette). Charles studies snakes for a living, and on the ship back to America from an African expedition, he meets Jean Harrington (Barbara Stanwyck), a con-woman and daughter of a card shark conman (Charles Coburn). Jean sets her sights on Charles for devious purposes, but then she finds that she’s falling for him. As for Charles, he is lost at first sight.

Then, thanks to Charles’ efficient bodyguard and handler, Muggsy (William Demarest), he learns the truth about Jean and her father. There is a messy breakup before the boat reaches U.S. shores. However, Jean is determined to make Charles even more uncomfortable by pretending to be the aristocratic British society lady, Lady Eve Sedgwick, and showing up at his father’s estate. The seduction begins again, despite the obvious fact that Eve looks exactly like Jean. Revealing what happens next would spoil the fun.

And fun it is. Watching Fonda’s Charles bewilderment and shy-man routine fall victim to Stanwyck’s domination over the entire proceedings will induce much smiling and several belly laughs. The improbability of the story and how it’s delivered with confidence is part of Sturges’ genius. This is great stuff.

The Criterion Collection had previously released this title on DVD years ago, and the new high definition upgrade is worth the double-dip. It’s a new, restored 4K digital transfer with an uncompressed monaural soundtrack. Most of the original supplements are ported over—an audio commentary from 2001 by film scholar Marian Keane; a video introduction from 2001 by Peter Bogdanovich; a featurette on Edith Head’s costume designs; the Lux Radio Theatre adaptation featuring Stanwyck with Ray Milland; and the theatrical trailer. What’s new is the previously mentioned, thoroughly entertaining and informative Zoom conversation between Tom Sturges and friends; a fascinating video essay by film critic David Cairns; and an audio recording from 2013 of “Up the Amazon,” a song from an unproduced stage musical based on the film. The illustrated booklet comes with an essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien and a 1946 profile of Sturges from Life Magazine.

Criterion always delivers a class-act product, and the new Blu-ray of The Lady Eve is no exception. In the age of Covid, a little Preston Sturges is a welcome distraction.

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BY DARREN ALLISON

“Light into Ink: A Critical Survey of 50 Film Novelizations” [DeLuxe Edition]: [Colour Interior] by S.M. Guariento. Publisher: Independently published. Softback: 480 pages, ISBN-10: 1687489084 ISBN-13: 978-1687489081, Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 2.8 x 25.4 cm, price £39.99

As most film fans would concur, the humble film ‘tie-in’ paperback, or if you would prefer, novelisation – was pretty much an essential element for movie lovers. Perhaps ‘tie-in’ is a somewhat dated term these days, but it still relates to the same thing - a book whose jacket, packaging, contents, or promotion relates to a feature film or a television show. Back in the day, the paperback novelisation had a magnetic effect, usually because it contained the wonderful film artwork or an iconic photo of its star in a scene from the movie. They proved quite irresistible and the newsagent’s rotary stands were often the place to find many treasurers. However, it was also a little piece of collecting history that hadn’t really been examined to any great depth – until now.

S.M. Guariento’s book is an excellent examination of 50 such books. The London-born author provides a detailed case study of various genres. In his research, Guariento doesn’t skip or avoid and leaves no stone unturned. He examines the evolution of the softback, particularly from its 1950s explosion where the paperback began being a preference over that of the hardback equivalent. It’s an excellent historical journey and it’s a great education in how it all evolved. However, there is no escaping the overriding appeal of their presentation and the genuine pulling power of their lush and varied cover art.

Guariento provides some glorious memories with the turn of each page, delving into TV titles such as Target’s Doctor Who, Bantam’s Star Trek and Futura’s Space 1999 – all of which contained heart racing cover imagery.

The book’s subtitle ‘50 Film Novelizations’ can perhaps be easily misinterpreted and arguably underrates this book’s mammoth amount of content. In terms of subject genres, Guariento hits the sweet spot every single time. In his chapter selections he has chosen very wisely, covering Eastwood, Bond, Planet of the Apes, Horror, Sci-fi, Hammer, Crime, Spy – in fact, everything that is both engaging and appealing to a key audience. Other chapters focus more specifically, such as cult filmmakers (including David Cronenberg and John Carpenter) and the adaptations of their various films. Most importantly, do not be misled into thinking that 50 film novelisations simply equates to 50 cover illustrations. The book also serves as a spectacular pictorial treasury with hundreds of covers featured - either related within the context of a chapter or shown as different or alternative editions of certain titles. Guariento certainly has this covered. This book is practically a dream.

Despite the glowing praise I’m happy to bestow upon this book, readers should also take note - and it’s a very important note: Guariento’s book does come in two very different versions. The version submitted for the purposes of this review is, in fact, the deluxe edition, meaning simply that all images contained within its pages are presented in stunning colour.

However, the book is also available in a Midnight Edition, which is identical in terms of content except that its pages consist of monochrome (b/w) images. I also know I can speak for a great number of similar minded colleagues and friends who will find this somewhat disappointing. For me, it practically punctured the heart of the book and its overall enjoyment. For people who grew up with these books, seeing them reproduced in black and white simply diminishes the retrospective element of its joy. Of course, it does provide a more affordable (£14.99) alternative. Nevertheless, given the books’ subject, it does slightly contradict what the book originally sets out to celebrate.

There’s very little doubt about it, ‘Light into Ink’ is an exceptionally detailed, well produced and yes, a beautifully illustrated book. But just be aware; make sure you know exactly which edition you are ordering should you choose to indulge further. If it’s entirely possible, make every effort towards the deluxe colour edition, I can promise you – you’ll be very glad you went the extra yard.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Ennio Morricone, the Oscar-winning and prolific film composer, has died in Rome at age 91 from complications resulting from a fall that had left him with a fractured hip. In the course of his career, Morricone rose from composing music for little-seen Italian films to becoming an icon of the movie industry. He worked virtually non-stop, turning out a head-spinning number of film scores. However, it was his collaborations with director Sergio Leone that brought him to international attention. When United Artists head of production David V. Picker saw Leone's A Fistful of Dollars  and For a Few Dollars More, both of which had been sensations at the European boxoffice, he purchased the distribution rights for the movies for English language territories. He also agreed to finance the third and final film in the series, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The films proved to be sensations worldwide and audiences responded enthusiastically to Morricone's quirky scores. His music for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly remains one of the most iconic main film themes ever composed, rivaled only, perhaps, by the James Bond Theme. Morricone's work was highly original, and for the Italian westerns often included full choirs singing intentionally unintelligible words. Ironically, in the United States, Morricone's main theme for "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" became a major hit on the radio, but it was a cover version performed by Hugo Montenegro and his orchestra. Even after the success of the Leone Western trilogy, Morricone continued to compose scores for low-grade Italian films. One of the most amusing was "O.K. Connery", the title song for the 1967 James Bond spoof "Operation Kid Brother" which starred Sean Connery's brother Neil. The film (currently streaming on Amazon Prime) was dreadful but you might find yourself humming Morricone's catchy opening song. Morricone teamed again with Sergio Leone for another western masterpiece "Once Upon a Time in the West", as his star rose internationally and he became increasingly revered by film enthusiasts worldwide.

Over the course of decades, Morricone retained his status as a workaholic composer. In 2006, he received an honorary Oscar for his lifetime achievements. It was  presented to him, appropriately enough, by Clint Eastwood, star of the Leone "Dollars" trilogy. Morricone continued to compose non-film scores that were acclaimed in their own right and often performed by him in live concerts that were always hot ticket events. However, it was the movies that cemented his legendary status. He had been nominated for numerous Oscars before winning in for his score for Quentin Tarantino's 2015 film "The Hateful Eight". His influence continues today. "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" theme is currently heard in a TV commercial, as is his magnificent composition from that film, "The Ecstasy of Gold", which is the signature theme for Modelo beer commercials.

For more about Morricone's career, click here to read obituary by Jon Burlingame of Variety.

BY DOUG OSWALD

William Holden commands a newly formed commando group in “The Devil’s Brigade,” available by Kino Lorber on Blu-ray. On the heels of the successful “The Dirty Dozen” from the previous year, “The Devil’s Brigade” is based on the 1966 book by Robert H. Adleman and Colonel George Walton. It chronicles the true events of the 1st Special Service, a joint American and Canadian commando unit assigned to the United States Fifth Army. Inspired by true events, the movie follows the standard tropes of this type of action adventure men- at -war movie. A rag-tag group of soldiers are brought together for a mission, they initially mistrust each other, get into a fight, train together, get into another fight this time working together against another group, graduate from their training and then deploy on their mission to fight the enemy (usually Germans, Italians or Japanese). I recall seeing this for the first time on American broadcast television with commercials advertising “The American misfits and the proud Canadians…” The commando group starts training at an American base where the two groups learn to work as a single unit. The action switches to German occupied Italy in the second half as they battle the Germans in close combat action sequences.

The movie features a “Hollywood Who’s Who” cast of leading men and character actors: William Holden as Lt. Colonel Robert T. Frederick, the commander of the unit. Cliff Robertson as the Canadian commander, Major Alan Crown. Vince Edwards as the American commander, Major Cliff Bricker. The supporting cast gets even better with the American misfits and proud Canadians portrayed by: Claude Akins as Private Rocky Rockman, Richard Jaeckel as Private Omar Creco, Andrew Prine as Private Theodore Ransom, Richard Dawson as Private Hugh MacDonald, Luke Askew as Private Hubert Hixon, Tom Troup as Private Al Manella, Jeremy Slate as Sergeant Pat O’Neill, Jack Watson as Corporal Peacock, Harry Carey Jr. as Captain Rose, Michael Rennie as Lt. General Mark Clark, Carroll O’Connor as Major General Maxwell Hunter, Dana Andrews as Brig. General Walter Naylor, Michael Rennie as Lt. General Mark Clark, stunt man and future director Hal Needham as a sergeant. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Karl-Otto Alberty as the German officer interrogating Claude Akins. Fans of retro classics will remember him as the German tank commander in “Kelly’s Heroes” and the German officer who captures Richard Attenborough in “The Great Escape” and orders, “Hands UP!”

Holden give a stoic, yet one-dimensional, performance as the commander. This is a year prior to his iconic performance as Pike in Sam Peckinpah’s classic “The Wild Bunch” in 1969. While “The Devil’s Brigade” is not as highly regarded as that movie, or even “The Dirty Dozen,” it stands on its own as a minor classic in the genre. Richard Jaeckel steals every scene he appears in. Cliff Robertson is terrific as the Canadian commander, just a year away from his Academy Award-winning performance in “Charly.”  Vince Edwards was transitioning back to the big screen following his run on television in “Ben Casey” which was a very popular series in the first half of the 1960s. However, the abundant cast makes it difficult for anyone to really stand out as the face behind this movie, as Lee Marvin did in “The Dirty Dozen.”

Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, a veteran director of many popular movies, the film looks and sounds terrific and clocks in at 130 minutes. Released in May 1968 by United Artists, it was filmed in widescreen Panavision on location in Utah. The Utah location doubles for the training base during the first half of the film and some of the action when the brigade get to Italy in the second half. From the appearance of the buildings, it appears to have been filmed on an active military base in Utah. The buildings look live in and may have been left standing from the WWII period, which was not uncommon. Much of the second half was filmed on location in Italy in actual WWII battle locations, using much of the same armaments used in countless other WWII-themed movies filmed in the 60s and 70s. The production value in the location filming really elevates this movie. Look through the windows in the interior scenes during the first half of the movie and you’ll notice that McLaglen ensures there is stuff going on outside, making the location come alive.

Unfortunately, the movie was not a major hit during its initial release. Subsequent broadcast television, cable TV and home video releases have elevated its status over the years as a solid action adventure movie. The film is often compared to “The Dirty Dozen” which came out the previous year. There are definite similarities and this may have been part of the movie’s shortfall a the boxoffice. Also, the Vietnam War was raging and military movies were falling out of favor. It’s hard to know for certain, as movie audiences can be fickle. However, the “men on an impossible mission” genre remains popular to this day.

The Kino Lorber Blu-ray comes with an audio commentary by film historians Steve Mitchell and Steven Jay Rubin. The commentary is an entertaining trivia and  Mitchell and Rubin know their stuff when it comes to military movies. Rubin is an expert on the various armaments used in the film and has a knack for identifying Hollywood military weapon sound effects and the differences between the studio libraries. The audio commentary is compelling enough to justify watching the Blu-ray twice. The other extras are the trailer for this and other Kino Lorber Blu-ray titles.

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(For extensive coverage of "The Devil's Brigade", see Cinema Retro's Movie Classics Films of WWII special issue.)

Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Mill Creek Entertainment:

Exclusive Release For Ultraman Day Featuring Cover Art By Alex Ross!

Minneapolis, MN (June 17, 2020) Mill Creek Entertainment is pleased to announce, “The Birth of Ultraman Collection”, a Blu-ray set containing some of the best episodes of the original ULTRAMAN series with both the original Japanese language and the classic English dub audio tracks plus THE BIRTH OF ULTRAMAN – ULTRAMAN Pre-Premiere Special, the very first appearance of the hero that would become famous across the world as Ultraman. 

This exclusive Blu-ray release also features art created by Alex Ross which is also featured on THE RISE OF ULTRAMAN cover for Marvel Comics and Tsuburaya Production’s recent collaboration with the debut issue releasing September 2020.

This exciting, special-edition comes off the back of Mill Creek Entertainment’s license of the entire available Ultraman back-catalog via international distribution company Indigo Entertainment, from the revolutionary team at Tsuburaya Productions Co., Ltd. 

Mill Creek Entertainment now brings a selection of ULTRAMAN episodes in high definition video with DTS-HD Master Audio of the original Japanese soundtrack plus the uncut United Artists English dubs. Each episode will also come with two English subtitle options; one for the Japanese audio and a second matching the English audio track. “The Birth of Ultraman Collection" will include the following episodes...

Episode 1 – ULTRA OPERATION NO. 1 – The story begins as the heroic alien Ultraman pursues the space monster Bemular to Earth, leading to a fateful encounter with Shin Hayata, an agent of the SSSP.

Episode 2 – SHOOT THE INVADER – Ultraman’s iconic foe, Alien Baltan, makes its first appearance in a tale narrated by Ide, the SSSP's genius inventor.

Episode 19 – DEMONS RISE AGAIN – An ancient time capsule unleashes the red-skinned monster Banila and its blue-skinned rival Aboras, who wage a titanic battle in the National Stadium.

Episodes 26 & 27 – THE MONSTER HIGHNESS Parts 1 & 2 – The only 2-part ULTRAMAN story features the Ancient Monster Gomora, who escapes captivity and overwhelms Ultraman as it rampages towards Osaka.

Episode 33 – THE FORBIDDEN WORDS – When Alien Mefilas tries to convince a boy to give him the Earth, even Ultraman may not be able to stop him.

Episode 37 – A LITTLE HERO – Ide suffers a crisis of faith as the Friendly Monster Pigmon warns that the evil creature Geronimon is reviving an army of monsters to destroy Ultraman and the SSSP!

Also included is THE BIRTH OF ULTRAMAN – ULTRAMAN Pre-Premiere Special. Airing in Japan on July 10, 1966, one week before the series premiere, this stage show was filmed before a live studio audience and introduced viewers to the story, cast and characters of ULTRAMAN. This July 10 debut of ULTRAMAN on television is now celebrated annually and known throughout the world as “Ultraman Day.” Never before released in America, this special is presented in black & white (as originally broadcast) in standard definition with Japanese audio and English subtitles.

ULTRAMAN premiered on Japanese television on July 17, 1966 and was an immediate ratings smash. While the series was still in production, the North American rights were licensed to United Artists, who in-turn commissioned voice director Peter Fernandez (Speed Racer) to supervise the English dubbing of the show. The English language version was syndicated to American television in 1967 and went on to air in various markets across the country into the early 1980s.

"The Birth of Ultraman Collection" Blu-ray will be exclusively sold on DeepDiscount as part of the launch of a dedicated Ultraman storefront that will offer up all of Mill Creek Entertainment's current Blu-ray/SteelBook® releases in addition to other Ultraman related merchandise and product.  Available July 10, 2020, the set retails for $25.99.   Pre-order today: https://bit.ly/DDUltraman

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

Originally released in 1980, FRIDAY THE 13TH captured audiences’ imaginations and permeated our collective psyche.  The film spawned one of the longest-running and most successful horror franchises in film history with 11 subsequent movies and, 40 years later, the iconic machete-wielding killer continues to haunt, fascinate and terrify new generations. 

FRIDAY THE 13TH follows a group of young counselors preparing for the reopening of Camp Crystal Lake, where a boy drowned years earlier.  One by one, the counselors are stalked by a mysterious and violent killer.  The film stars Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, and Kevin Bacon. 

The FRIDAY THE 13TH Limited Edition Blu-ray Steelbook features artwork from the original movie poster and includes the uncut, unrated version of the film, as well as access to a digital copy of the original theatrical version.  Plus, plunge deeper into the film with previously released bonus content including commentary, interviews with cast and crew, and behind-the-scenes featurettes.

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“THE CONSCIENCE COP”

By Raymond Benson

It was an unexpected pleasure to discover Guy Hamilton’s film version of J. B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls. The 1954 film is based on Priestley’s 1945 stage play and is a mostly faithful adaptation (by Desmond Davis), with some “opening up” and invented flashback scenes featuring a character who, in the play, is only talked about and doesn’t appear.

Hamilton (who went on to make four James Bond films, including the iconic Goldfinger) does a splendid job focusing on the tight-knit chamber piece that unfolds as a murder mystery-meets-confessional family drama. The acting all around is top-notch as well.

Alastair Sim, known mostly for comic roles and for his definitive Scrooge (A Christmas Carol, 1951, aka Scrooge in the U.K.), plays Inspector Poole (called “Goole” in the play), a seemingly all-knowing, canny inquisitor who appears out of nowhere one night in 1912 London to question each member of the wealthy and upper class Birling family about a young woman named Eva Smith (played in the aforementioned flashbacks by the charming Jane Wenham). Eva apparently died from poison that day in the infirmary. As is soon revealed, the patriarch and matriarch of the Birlings (played by Arthur Young and Olga Lindo), their daughter Sheila (Eileen Moore), their alcoholic and rebellious son (future writer/director Bryan Forbes, who went on to make such classics as Whistle Down the Wind in 1961 and other British classics of the 60s), and Sheila’s fiancé Gerald Croft (Brian Worth), all had dealings with the deceased young woman prior to her death. Was it a suicide? Was it murder?

As the film goes on, Poole deftly persuades each participant to tell his or her story about Eva. At one point, though, we begin to suspect that Poole is not who he seems. In fact, there is something rather supernatural about him. He predicts actions before they happen, and he mysteriously comes and goes. Perhaps he is really there to act as the conscience of these people who may or may not bear some responsibility in Eva’s demise. The outcome of the mystery is quite satisfactory, but it’s also open to interpretation. Brilliant stuff, actually.

Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray restoration (from StudioCanal) looks marvelous, and it contains optional English subtitles for the hearing impaired. An audio commentary by film historian David Del Valle is included as a supplement, along with a short interview with actress Jane Wenham (who gave up acting and married Albert Finney, a union that produced a son but ended in divorce after four years). Trailers for this and other Kino Lorber releases round out the package.

An Inspector Calls is a terrific British drawing-room mystery/drama, and an admirable example of how to adapt a story from stage to screen. Highly recommended.

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(Above: Raphael Peter Engel (aka Zandor Vorkov) today.

BY MARK CERULLI

When you think of Dracula, some iconic names immediately come to mind – Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, Gary Oldman, Jack Palance… and Raphael Engel.

Wait.

Who?

Raphael Peter Engel, aka “Zandor Vorkov” played the thirsty count in one of the most unique films to feature the immortal character – 1971’s Dracula vs Frankenstein, made by the prolific B-movie team of director Al Adamson and co-writer/producer Sam Sherman.

Both the actor and the film itself took a very circuitous route to come into being. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Raphael (then known as Roger) grew up with a younger brother in Miami, Florida. “We did Saturday matinees – two films, cartoons, a short, popcorn and I’d walk down many blocks to the theater…”, Raphael recalls in an exclusive Cinema Retro interview. “That influenced me. We’d come home and play the characters we had seen.”

He shipped out to Vietnam in 1965, coming under enemy fire as soon as he stepped off the troop carrier. After serving a year in the Army – “I made it out without a scratch,” – Engel returned to late 1960s New York where he managed record stores in Gotham’s Greenwich village while soaking up the era’s vibrant music scene. A collector of life stories, one of his favorites is helping Stevie Wonder make some record choices on a Christmas Eve. He also hung out with music producer Gary Katz (Steely Dan, Jim Croce) and drifted into the world of film finance. (Contrary to popular belief, he was never a stockbroker.) Raphael didn’t know it, but this was all leading up to his donning Dracula’s cape.

Dracula Vs Frankenstein started out as a totally different film – Satan’s Blood Freaks, later titled The Blood Seekers and meant to be a sequel to Sherman and Adamson’s 1969 effort, Satan’s Sadists (“The First Biker Horror Movie!”). Tapping into national unease over the Manson murders, marauding biker gangs and occultism, Satan’s Sadists was a hit.

Satan’s Blood Freaks/The Blood Seekers starred The Wolfman himself, Lon Chaney Jr. (in his final role), J. Carrol Naish (his final role), Al Adamson’s wife, Regina Carrol (billed as “the Freak Out Girl” in Satan Sadists), Angelo Rossitto from 1932’s Freaks and returning cast member Russ Tamblyn – more famous for his work in West Side Story. The plot followed a mad doctor Durea (Naish) hiding out in a seaside sideshow, whose lumbering henchman (Chaney) murdered people on the beach so he could reanimate their bodies. The results were… disappointing at best. There was talk of just shelving the film, but Sherman wanted to take a crack at fixing it – by introducing the iconic characters of Dracula and the Frankenstein monster. As he was rewriting the script, he and Adamson arranged a screening of their film and Raphael was there with a financier. Although Sherman wanted to tap John Carradine to play Dracula (as he had in Universal’s House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula), they didn’t want to pay his fee. Adamson took note of the tall, gaunt, assistant with the jet black Afro and popped the question, “How’d you like to play Count Dracula?” Funnily enough, Raphael didn’t even like horror films but he accepted the challenge. “It became an adventure,” Raphael says, adding, “When I commit to something, I really care about people and want to do the best I can so I pushed through my own resistance and thought, ‘How do I play this role?’”

Although he recalled seeing Lugosi’s epic performance (“It definitely set the tone for everything…”) Raphael tried to make the part his own. “I did everything I could to embody what my young self understood a vampire (to be).” How did he rate his turn as the Count? “It was different. to say the least. The other guys who played it were subtler and didn’t have long curly hair and I was younger.”

While the film was decidedly low budget, it was a fairly easy shoot. “There was no tension there except with J. Caroll Naish, who we found out later was hurting like mad (due to osteoporosis.)” Raphael remembers. “Angelo (Rossitto) kept to himself… I never remember him smiling… Regina Carrol was as nice as could be and John Bloom (the Frankenstein monster) was in makeup for hours.” (Sam Sherman has a memorable tale of seeing the 7-foot Bloom becoming more and more impatient in the makeup chair. Finally, the producer said, “John, what else do you have to do?” Bloom replied, “It’s tax season. I’m an accountant!”) Lon Chaney’s scenes had been shot two years earlier, so young Raphael never got a chance to meet the Wolfman. (Chaney, a heavy smoker and drinker, was suffering from throat cancer during production and died of heart failure in 1973.)

Dr. Durea’s (Frankenstein) lab scenes were shot at the Hollywood Stages in West Hollywood, utilizing studio alleys and the soundstage roof. Although done on the cheap, the production did utilize the same electro-magnetic gear from 1931’s Frankenstein, created by electrical effects wizard, Kenneth Strickfaden. “It kept me on my toes,” Raphael recalled. “I walked onto the set and somebody said ‘Stay back, Drac’ those are live!” Along with genuine camp, the film offers a rare opportunity to see the original Frankenstein electric gear in color.

Another member of the eclectic cast was longtime Famous Monsters of Filmland editor, Forrest J. Ackerman, playing an enemy of Dr. Frankenstein’s. Dracula appears in his car, directing him to a spot where the Frankenstein monster is waiting. Raphael remembers the legendary editor as being “A nice guy… he was really into it.” Ackerman returned the favor by putting Raphael on the cover of Famous Monsters issue #89. “That was an honor,” he says. (Ackerman also came up with Raphael’s distinctive screen name – “Zandor”, from Church of Satan founder Anton Szandor LaVey and “Vorkov” because it sorta sounded like Karloff!)

(Above: J.Carroll Naish with Forry Ackerman on the set.)

Originally the film was supposed to end with the count being impaled on a pipe as Regina Carrol escaped with her beau (Hawaiian Eye star Anthony Eisley). Sam Sherman considered that ending to be weak so he came up with a new one taking place in an abandoned church. Raphael and Carrol were flown back East and the climax was filmed in rural Somers, New York. Not having the funds to fly John Bloom in, the monster was played by Raphael’s former record store boss, Shelly Weiss. (“We just need a big guy who we could make up and follow directions… and he (Shelly) went nuts, he loved it and he got to tell everybody that story.”)

“They gave me a different cloak and they handed me some Halloween plastic teeth, somebody put clown white all over me and that made for a fun movie,” Raphael recalls with a laugh. Yes, the Count was wearing those upper and lower cheapo plastic fangs every 1960s kid wore at Halloween!

(Above: Regina Carrol and Lon Chaney Jr. in a candid moment.)

Fake fangs or not, Dracula literally tears the monster limb from limb, finally ripping off his head. Dracula’s shocking act of violence is totally at odds with the gentle, civic-minded actor. “Everybody who knows me said ‘You did what?’” Raphael recalls. Three years later, Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam riffed off the grisly sequence with the memorable scene of King Arthur (Graham Chapman) dismembering the Black Knight (John Cleese) in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Interestingly, Gilliam once worked with Sam Sherman at Warren Publications, publisher of Famous Monsters.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Jerry Stiller, who rose to fame in the 1960s by teaming with his wife Anne Meara as a comedy act, has died at age 92. The father of actor Ben Stiller, Jerry went on to a successful acting career himself, becoming an iconic presence on such television series as "Seinfeld" and "The King of Queens". Both he and his wife Anne always aspired to acting careers but found their initial success in standup comedy, although Stiller appeared in dramatic roles on many television programs beginning in the late 1950s. Anne was a tall and of Irish heritage and Catholic while Jerry was short and Jewish. Their first major break came in 1961 when Ed Sullivan featured them on his show. They were an immediate sensation and would be invited back over the years for return appearances. Audiences loved their shtick which revolved around the ways men and women get on each other's nerves. They always worked "clean" and their observations resonated with everyday people who could identify with them. Ultimately, both Stiller and Meara would develop separate, successful acting careers. Stiller got his first credited role in a feature film in 1974 with a supporting part in "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three". Many more film roles would follow. However, it was in the role of Frank Constanza on the TV series "Seinfeld" that he became immortalized in pop culture. The character was high strung, manic and possessed a hair-trigger temper, generally directed at his son George (Jason Alexander) or his long-suffering wife Estelle (Estelle Harris). Despite the show's long run, Stiller only appeared in 30 episodes but his presence was always welcomed by fans. His most memorable episode involved his character's devotion to the fictional holiday he created, "Festivus", which was an alternative to Christmas and Hanukkah. "Festivus for the rest of us!" was his mantra and the logo can be found on the T shirts of fans even today. Following "Seinfeld", Stiller found great success playing a regular role in the CBS sitcom "The King of Queens" over a nine year period.

Jerry Stiller never went out of style. He continued to work even after Anne's death in 2015, occasionally teaming with his son Ben, with whom he appeared in the two "Zoolander" films.

For NY Times obituary, click here.

"Those Sensational Swing Scores:  Or How I Journeyed from 1949’s Martin Kane, Private Eye to 2018’s King of Thieves in Four Years, Two Months, 17 Days, Six Hours and 43 Minutes"

By Derrick Bang, author of "Crime and Spy Jazz 1950-1970" and "Crime and Spy Jazz Since  1971" (McFarland)

I initially wanted to write the ultimate guide to television’s Peter Gunn. But some quick research revealed that it would be hard to improve upon Joe Manning’s excellent two-part feature story in the June and July 2007 issues of Film Score Monthly magazine; and Mike Quigley’s impressively thorough website guide to that iconic 1958-61 TV series (at www.petergunn.tv). That said, Mike’s meticulously thorough analysis of the show’s music planted a larger seed: perhaps a book about classic TV action jazz? Even there, though, a few existing books — such as Kristopher Spencer’s Film and Television Scores, 1950-1979 — had covered that territory to a degree.

So, go bigger still: a survey of all television and film action/spy/detective jazz, with a focus that I knew hadn’t yet been tackled. All that cool music by Henry Mancini, John Barry, Lalo Schifrin, Edwin Astley, Quincy Jones, Jerry Goldsmith and hundreds more. Aside from some scholarly works that go deep on a small number of TV shows or films — such as David Butler’s Jazz Noir — nobody had undertaken the challenge to discuss so much music in context. This became obvious, as I began to build a library of research material, when I got the distinct impression that many authors merely cited the existence of genre soundtrack albums, perhaps even enthusing about the music itself, but without having watched the TV show or movie from which it sprang. Too frequently, there was no sense of how a soundtrack composer’s efforts helped — or sometimes hindered — the finished product.

Thus armed with an elevator pitch, I approached the McFarland & Co. editor (David Alff) who had shepherded my 2012 biography of Northern California’s famed “Dr. Funk,” Vince Guaraldi at the Piano. David loved the concept; a contract was signed. When pressed for a likely length, I naïvely suggested 125,000 words.

Boy, was that off the mark.

The first phase was the most difficult: determining a list of likely candidates. Paging carefully through Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh’s Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows (ninth and final edition) yielded a lengthy list of potential small screen American candidates; determining likely British entries proved more challenging, as did assembling a similar list of big-screen feature films. I eventually wound up with 486 films from 1950 to the present day, which featured crime/spy/action storylines, and ultimately watched and analyzed 350; the others were discarded for their lack of jazz scores. The task was far more challenging on the small screen, where 750 shows were considered from 1947 forward; 206 ultimately made the cut. And, unlike a movie, which is a single (roughly) two-hour experience with music by (usually) one individual, many of the TV shows necessitated the viewing of at least half a dozen episodes, due to the involvement of multiple musicians.

You didn’t want to be in the room while I was watching each entry, because of all the stopping, sometimes backing up, and resuming … particularly if a soundtrack album existed. As Cinema Retro’s soundtrack fans are well aware, most early albums a) were studio re-recordings; and b) assembled the tracks out of viewing order. So I’d hit a particularly choice Johnny Mandel passage in (for example) 1958’s I Want to Live, and then search the album tracks until finding — or, vexingly, not finding — the cue in question. Over and over and over again. Depending on quality and/or significance, each entry then generated an essay of anywhere from a few paragraphs to three or four pages.

Roughly four years later, the finished result came in just shy of 600,000 words. Okay, fine; first drafts are over-written. As William Faulkner famously advised, “In writing, you must kill all your darlings.” So I buried hundreds of them in the back yard, and wound up with a more manageable 250,000 words. At which point, I knew that further trimming would have deleted too much “good stuff”; the text would have been compromised beyond repair, destroying the manuscript’s design as a truly definitive study of this jazz sub-genre.

So I threw myself on the altar of McFarland’s mercy, and — to my delight (and considerable relief) — they okayed amending the contract for a two-volume set, thus preserving every word of the final draft.

Having now emerged at the far end of this jazz-laden journey, my music library (and the groaning shelves in our small home) are much richer for the process that led to this just-published result. And if these two books similarly pique your curiosity — and correspondingly deplete your bank account — then I’ll consider it a job well done.

(Derrick Bang has written film, television, music and general entertainment commentary since the mid-1970s, and is the author of several books about Charles M. Schulz and Peanuts. He can be reached at www.screenactionjazz.com.)

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Paramount Home Video has released a new Blu-ray special edition of Cecil B. DeMille’s epic “The Ten Commandments”. The set includes both the director’s original silent film version as well as his 1956 blockbuster remake starring Charlton Heston as Moses. To commemorate the release of the video, Cinema Retro Editor-in-Chief Lee Pfeiffer caught up with filmmaker Fraser C. Heston to discuss the impact of the movie on his father’s career. (An interesting footnote: Fraser Heston is seen in the film as baby Moses, thus, both father and son played the same character.)

Cinema Retro: Your father first worked for Cecil B. DeMille on The Greatest Show on Earth. Would you say he is the singular most important person responsible for your father’s rise to fame?

Fraser C. Heston: Absolutely. My father was on the Paramount lot and he waved at Mr. DeMille. He had been on the lot for some other audition and he saw Mr. DeMille by the gate and said, “Hello, Mr. DeMille” before driving off the lot. Mr. DeMille asked his secretary, “Who was that guy?” She said, “Oh, that’s Charlton Heston. I think you met him before and you didn’t think much of him.” But DeMille said, “Well, I think he’s an interesting guy. Why don’t you have him over and I’ll meet with him?” He ends up offering him the part of the circus manager in The Greatest Show on Earth and it ends up winning the Academy Award for Best Picture. Then he tells him to come back for another meeting- he doesn’t even tell him what the part is- and says, “I’m going to make The Ten Commandments.” He shows him models and paintings all afternoon and gets him all excited but he doesn’t offer him a part. He just says, “I’ll bring you back in a week or two.” He ended up asking him, “How would you like to play Moses?” The rest is history, as they say.

CR: Was your father intimidated by playing such an historic character?

FH: No, I think he embraced the challenge. He obviously didn’t have to play him from a baby, as that was my job! But he did have to play him as a young man right up through when he had that white beard at the end of the movie, however old Moses was at that point. He also had the challenge of going from an Egyptian prince to a slave to the leader of his people- and to do it in a way that perhaps wasn’t as stylized as some of the DeMille epics. That film, I think, stands the test of time. The reason for that, I think, is the fantastic cast. Look at Yul Brynner’s performance, for example. I can’t imagine anyone else playing Ramses.

CR: I’m trying to remember if your father and Brynner ever worked together again…

FH: They did on The Buccaneer, which was produced by DeMille and directed by his son-in-law, Anthony Quinn. Not as good a film, obviously, but still a classic. Some interesting trivia- if I live long enough, since I was the youngest actor on the set of The Ten Commandments, I will be the last actor in Hollywood who worked with Cecil B. DeMille.

(Photo copyright Fraser C. Heston, 2019.) 

CR: I was recently revisiting your father’s wonderful book “The Actor’s Life”, which consists of the daily diary entries he kept when shooting films and discovered that, unfortunately, he began this habit only after The Ten Commandments has wrapped, though he does discuss post-production work on the movie. But he does write, “If you can’t make a career out of two DeMille pictures, you’d better turn in your suit.” He also writes, “Our son Fraser was born while we were shooting The Ten Commandments. He played the infant Moses at the age of three months and immediately retired, displaying an acute judgment of the acting profession.”

FH: (Laughing) Well, I think I felt a little pressure from my dad not to follow in his footsteps.

CR: Well, many offspring of iconic actors have followed in their footsteps with varying degrees of success. Were you ever tempted to do so?

FH: I think I was but I was discouraged by my mom and dad. I mean Michael Douglas pulled it off and a couple of other father-and-son acting teams pulled it off but I think my parents knew how tough it would be to follow in my dad’s footsteps. I started out in a different aspects of films. I started out as a writer and discovered I liked writing screenplays. I got a couple of things made and from there I started producing and then directing. So I came at filmmaking more from the storyteller’s point-of-view. I consider myself, even if I’m directing, to be a storyteller. That’s a director’s job.

CR: When was the first time you remember seeing The Ten Commandments?

FH: I was probably about five and it was pretty terrifying, you know between the Burning Bush and the destruction of Pharaoh’s army when the Red Sea collapses…and oh, my God…

CR: …and let’s not forget the presence of the great Vincent Price…

FH: Yes, the evil Vincent Price and Yvonne De Carlo and Yul Brynner and everybody. It was just fantastic. How could you have seen that as a young person and not been blown away by it all and be terribly impressed? I think everyone had that experience the first time they saw it. People in our generation were young when it came out and that was their first experience with an epic film. I think you have to place the film in a larger pool of epics associated with my father along with Ben-Hur, El Cid and to a certain degree, Planet of the Apes that culminated in films like Gladiator. You can even go so far as The Avengers series, which are giant modern epics. I think DeMille started it all. When you think of spectacle, you think of C.B. DeMille. When you think of C.B. DeMille, you think of The Ten Commandments, right?

CR: I’ve always said that if you didn’t like the way he directed actors, you had to admire the way he directed traffic in films that large…

FH: (Laughs) So true!

CR: I recall you once telling me that in the Heston household, DeMille was a revered name.

FH: He was. My dad always called him Mr. DeMille, never C.B. We still have the telegram he sent my mom and when I was born saying, “Congratulations, he’s got the part.” I’m looking at a picture on my wall right now. It’s a photo of me at age four or five being held in my dad’s arms and reaching out and tweaking Mr. DeMille’s nose.

(Blackman as Pussy Galore in "Goldfinger")

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Honor Blackman, who rose to fame as one of the first female action stars in both film and television, has passed away at age 94. Ms. Blackman started in British films in the late 1940s. Her rise to fame came when she first appeared as Cathy Gale opposite Patrick MacNee in the iconic British TV series "The Avengers". The show was a major hit and Blackman's character was a novelty for the era, in that she could hold her own against larger-than-life villains, often employing judo. Her success in the series led to her being offered the female lead of Pussy Galore in the third James Bond film, "Goldfinger" starring Sean Connery. In order to play the role, Blackman had to leave "The Avengers" after her second and final season. Diana Rigg took over the female lead  and also soared to stardom on the show. Coincidentally, Rigg, too, would become a Bond star opposite George Lazenby in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service".

(Capitalizing on her judo abilities, Blackman authored a book on self-defense.) 

Honor Blackman was multi-talented and found great success in films, television and on the stage. Although she was primarily known for the role of the sensual tough girl Pussy Galore, she enjoyed a long career in her native Britain, where she remained popular throughout the decades. On a personal note, we at Cinema Retro were honored to have spent time with her over the years. We first met her when we interviewed her for MGM's documentary "The Making of 'Goldfinger'" in 1995 and we would occasionally find ourselves in her company while in London. She remained vibrant, beautiful and always possessed a very saucy sense of humor. We join film fans everywhere in mourning her passing.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

"Night Passage", a top-notch 1957 western showcasing James Stewart and a terrific supporting cast. The film was to be yet another collaboration between Stewart and director Anthony Mann but things fell apart when Audie Murphy was cast as Stewart's brother. Mann objected, saying he found their physical differences too unbelievable for that concept and felt the film would be undermined by the casting. Mann dropped out and television director James Neilson took over the troubled production. The hard feelings between Stewart and Mann ended their long friendship as well as their professional collaborations. Neilson was able to exploit the wonders of Technirama, a short-lived widescreen process that was competing with CinemaScope in an attempt to lure increasingly prosperous Americans away from their new television sets and get them back into movie theaters. The screenplay was by the estimable Borden Chase. adapting a story from The Saturday Evening Post, as he had done for Howard Hawks' 1948 masterwork "Red River".

In "Night Passage", James Stewart plays Grant McLaine, a middle-aged drifter and cowpoke who had once been hired by the railroad to thwart a string of robberies committed by the Utica Kid (Audey Murphy), who is later revealed to be McLaine's kid brother. Seems that the railroad boss Ben Kimball (J.C. Flippen) became steamed when McLaine allowed the Utica Kid to escape on one occasion, though he did not know the two men were brothers. Kimball was convinced that McLaine and the Kid were in cahoots and fired McLaine. Now a new series of payroll robberies is occurring on the transport train with dismaying regularity. Kimball rehires McLaine, though he still harbors suspicions about him being in collusion with the Utica Kid and his gang. In fact, the Kid is indeed with a new gang, but this time it's run by Whitey Harbin (Dan Duryea), a cold blooded thief and killer who is plotting another robbery of a payroll shipment. McLaine ensures he is aboard the train, but he has secreted the payroll money on himself. When the gang boards the train after devising a way to waylay the security guards, they find no money in the safe- so they take Kimball's wife Verna (Elaine Stewart) hostage until they are paid the $10,000 in payroll funds. Meanwhile, McLaine finds himself caring for a precious pre-teen orphan boy, Joey Adams (Brandon DeWilde), who helped him hide the payroll money when the crooks boarded the train. The rest of the film follows McLaine as he tracks the gang to their hideout and has a rather tense reunion with his brother, who ignores his pleas to quit his career in crime. The entire affair ends with an exciting shootout at an abandoned mine camp that pits the two brothers on opposite sides.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Kenny Rogers, who overcame a hardscrabble upbringing to become a country music legend, has died at age 81. Rogers was a prolific talent. Inspired by seeing Ray Charles in concert, he decided to become a singer and was part of the New Christy Minstrels folk group in the early 1960s. Rogers then became part of the counter-culture revolution in music later in the decade. Many people probably don't realize that he was the lead vocal on the First Edition's `1967 hard rock, psychedelic hit "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)". He later found his niche in country western music and during the 1970s and 1980s became one of the most successful singers of the era, with tens of millions of albums sold. Rogers' iconic ballad "The Gambler" became massively popular and spurred a successful, if short-lived acting career in the 1980s based on a series of TV movies inspired by the song. Rogers' popularity didn't extend to the big screen, however. His 1982 feature film "Six Pack" was a family comedy that proved to be only moderately successful at the boxoffice. Music was his bread and butter and Rogers had the ability to cross over into audiences that generally rejected country and western music, making him one of the most celebrated singers of his time. For more, click here.

BY MARK CERULLI

Deep in the heart of Texas there’s a nondescript gas station on the side of a sleepy road… You can’t buy gas there. They don’t sell lottery tickets, and the closest neighbors are a herd of cows. But this gas station has a unique place in horror film history as a key setting of director Tobe Hooper’s iconic 1974 film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The station was in serious disrepair when it caught the eye of Texas Chainsaw Massacre mega-fan Roy Rose who “fell in love with the movie since I was ten years old.” Why? “It’s the most realistic horror movie there is, nothing else is even close,” Roy explains. He then set about living his dream - approaching the station’s original owner to buy it. A few years (and many phone calls later) his persistence paid off – the station was his. “I told my wife and my kids, ‘Let’s go! We’re moving to Texas…’” Roy chuckles.

Tall and bearded, the Ohio businessman shrugs off the two years of hard work it took to bring the station back from its sorry state. He stocked it with a vast array of horror masks and figures, plus rows of licensed Chainsaw-centric t-shirts you can’t find anywhere else. A stickler for details, he tracked down the same outdoor chairs and even the same type of front door seen in the movie, finding them on Craigslist, then shipping them to Texas for a princely sum.

But Roy’s vision included much more than just creating an out-of-the-way horror boutique. First, he added… barbeque from a huge, custom-made smoker. “Oh, we got the best barbeque,” Roy says confidently. This Cinema Retro scribe can truthfully say that the gas station’s smoked brisket was tender and juicy and their sausage was delicious – not too spicy, with a satisfying snap. Roy’s Gas Station Chili also hit the spot, served with plenty of white bread to sop it up with.

Roy also turned the gas station into a tourist destination by building cozy one-room cabins that can be rented for one night or longer. Once a year he screens his favorite film at the compound (“I always pay the licensing fee,” he points out) and holds a horror convention where surviving cast members sign autographs and mingle with fans. “Fans come to the gas station, meet the stars and we also have live music.”

On the day of my visit, original TCM actor Allen Danziger (Jerry, the van’s driver) arrived to discuss his merchandising plans (get ready for “Chainsaw Jerry’s Beef Jerky”). After chowing down on a smoked sausage sandwich, the former Bronx native was ready to talk about making the historic film. “For me it was a lark, I wasn’t an actor,” Allen explained. He just happened to have worked on director Tobe Hooper’s first film, Eggshells (“It was a psychedelic, hippy dippy kind of thing”) so he was a shoo-in for a part in Chainsaw.

Fortunately for Allen, he didn’t have to spend much time inside the actual Chainsaw house. “People were puking and getting sick after a take, it was awful,” he recalled. Remember all those dead animals on the walls and dangling from the ceilings? They weren’t rubber props, they were REAL dead animals – roadkill! “Occasionally I would get a whiff of Gunnar (Hansen) and that was enough.” (Hansen was the 6’4” Icelandic-born actor who played the murderous Leatherface in the film.) “Gunnar and I became real good friends,” Allen said, adding, “He was very bright with a good sense of humor…” Sadly, Hansen passed away in 2015 at age 68.

After filming ended, Allen visited the director in the editing room. “Tobe showed me some scenes and asked what he could do to improve them. I jokingly said ‘Have the seats facing away from the screen.’” That did NOT go over well with the prickly filmmaker. “I didn’t see any more rushes.” But once the film was edited and retitled – from Headcheese to the more familiar The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Allen was sold on it.

When asked what he wanted fans to remember about the game-changing movie, Allen said, “That a group of young people gave their all…” He did mention that promised shares in the film’s profits never materialized - but such is showbiz. (TCM grossed over $30 million on a $140K budget.)

After his two Tobe Hooper roles, Allen landed a small part in Willie Nelson’s Honeysuckle Rose and then his acting career hit the skids. “I had a rapid rise and a meteoric fall,” Allen laughs, explaining that he went into social work and had his own entertainment company. Now 77, Danziger credits the film’s intense realism to its long-lasting success. “None of us were known but there was the believability that this all could happen. I mean, it’s Texas.”

Look for Roy’s Cult Classic Convention in Bastrop, Texas in February, 2021, headlining Bill Moseley (Chop Top in TCM 2), Caroline Williams (TCM 2), Camille Keaton (I Spit on Your Grave), Joe Don Baker (Walking Tall) and others TBD. Check Roy’s creepy empire by clicking here. 

HOW TO GET THERE

The Gas Station is located in Bastrop, Texas, about 30 minutes outside Austin. Car Rental or Uber/Lyft are your best options in terms of getting there.  If you opt for a ride sharing service, offer to buy the driver a plate of BBQ while you shop for your Chainsaw treasures as it might be quite a wait to get a ride back into town!  

(Von  Sydow in "The Exorcist" in 1973.) 

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Max Von Sydow, the internationally acclaimed Swedish leading man who found fame in the films of Ingmar Bergman, has died at age 90. Von Sydow's most famous role may have been the knight who plays a game of chess with Death in an iconic scene from Bergman's 1958 classic "The Seventh Seal", but he also enjoyed broad international appeal. His other iconic role was as Father Merrin, the aging titular character in director William Friedkin's sensational 1973 film version of William Peter Blatty's bestseller, "The Exorcist". Von Sydow was already a major star in European cinema when he was cast in his first leading role in a Hollywood film, director George Stevens' 1965 religious epic "The Greatest Story Ever Told" in which he was cast as Jesus Christ. The film proved to be a major boxoffice flop but Von Sydow personally enjoyed good reviews for his dignified performance. From that point on, he would be a regular presence in English language cinema as well as European films. He won acclaim in a supporting performance as a dreary, humorless intellectual in Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters".  Von Sydow's career extended until the present day and he won a new generation of fans through his appearances in "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" in 2015 and in episodes of "Game of Thrones". For more about his life and career, click here.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

There is an old joke about a brain surgeon who must call a plumber to fix a broken pipe that is flooding his basement in the middle of the night. The plumber arrives and quickly fixes the problem then hands the brain surgeon a bill for his services. The brain surgeon's eyes open wide and he says, "I'm a brain surgeon and I don't get paid this much money for only a few minutes work!" To which the plumber replies, "Neither did I when I was a brain surgeon".  The joke unveils a common truth: that even the most sophisticated and educated person can find themselves helpless and dependent upon an everyday person who has more useful skills in terms of day-to-day living. This is the message that forms the basis of "The Admirable Crichton", a 1957 British film adapted from the 1902 stage production by "Peter Pan" author J.M. Barrie. Given that the story is a barbed poke at England's snooty days of old obsession with social status, Barrie's play, which opened when such societal prejudices were in full force, must have raised some eyebrows among the Reform Club set.

Kenneth More stars as the titular character, a devoted butler in the household of widower Lord Henry Loam (Cecil Parker), who presides over his country manor like a reigning monarch. However, Lord Loam has some progressive ideas and feels guilty that he doesn't even know the names of some of his lower-rung household staff. He orders that his three daughters Catherine (Mercy Haystead), Agatha (Miranda Connell) and Mary (Sally Ann Howes) join him in participating in a radical idea: they will devote an afternoon tea to getting to know the entire household staff, address them by name and wait on them. The girls are appalled at the concept and so is Crichton, who, as head butler, has the most esteemed position among the staff, as he also serves as Loam's personal valet. Crichton is a bit of a snob himself, as he doesn't want his status at the top of the pecking order to being jeopardized by the introduction of democracy to the household. The event is a miserable failure and ends prematurely due to everyone involved feeling awkward. Adding to Loam's woes is the arrest of Catherine, who had bypassed the social gathering to visit London, where she was charged with participating in a riot caused by a protest march by suffragettes. Wracked by the shame of the incident, Loam heeds Crichton's advice to set sail on the family yacht to the South Pacific until the scandal dies down. The group is joined on the holiday by two potential suitors, Lord Ernest Woolley (Ernest Harper) and a clergyman, John Treherne (Jack Watling.)

The cruise is going pleasantly enough when a brutal storm erupts, forcing everyone into two lifeboats. The boat carrying the girls, their suitors, Lord Loam and Critchton ends up beaching on an uninhabited small island. They have one addition to their group: a lowly housemaid named Tweeny (Diane Cilento), a sweet young woman from the other side of the tracks who is unsophisticated in the ways of the world.  Despite the dire circumstances, Critchton is expected to carry on with his duties as though he is back in England, serving up meager rations while dressed in formal attire. It soon becomes apparent, however, that the group will need fire, shelter, food and water and everyone is helpless when it comes to finding these necessities. That is, except Crichton, who steps to the fore and through personal knowledge and common sense, manages to keep everyone warm and well-fed by adapting to the elements. The story then jumps ahead two years and we find the castaways still stranded but living in relative luxury, thanks to Crichton's ingenuity. In a scenario that mirrors other far-fetched castaway tales from Disney's "Swiss Family Robinson" to "Gilligan's Island", the stranded group have erected fabulous living quarters that are furnished with luxuries that were salvaged from the sinking yacht that had washed up near the beach. We find Crichton has, by acclamation, been voted to serve as "Governor" of the island. Everyone is merry and the old social prejudices have broken down with the castaways engaging each other on a first name basis. In fact, the combination of sun, sand and a democratic society has everyone giddy and content. With Critchton as the group's leader and savior, the sisters vie for his attentions, with Mary especially smitten by him. However, Tweeny and Crichton have also formed a special bond, with Tweeny having improved her knowledge and vocabulary thanks to tutoring by Crichton. She and Mary are the main contenders to be Crichton's bride. When he finally chooses who he will marry, the ceremony is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of a rescue ship. Once back in London, the social order returns to its former status with all the inherent prejudices. Crichton must bear the humiliation of watching Lord Loam and the other male castaways brag to their friends that they were the key players in keeping the group alive and well. Ever the loyal butler, Crichton keeps the truth to himself, but he does have a strategy to free himself from the humiliating circumstances and finally find happiness.

BY DARREN ALLISON

On the 31st January, Silva Screen released two excellent BBC vinyl albums from the 1970s. Firstly, Paddy Kingsland was the first Radiophonic composer to see a solo release of his compositions, even though he’s not name-checked on the front of the sleeve. “Fourth Dimension”, first released in 1973, showcased Kingsland’s theme tunes for television and radio while at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The recordings feature a rock-style backing band and synthesisers including the VCS 3 and “Delaware” Synthi 100, and the track “Reg” from the album was also released as the B side to the 1973 single release of the iconic Doctor Who theme tune. Kingsland remained at the workshop for 21 years, leaving in 1981, during which time he composed music for much loved TV shows The Changes, Doctor Who and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy among others. Paddy Kingsland is now part of the newly-revived independent “Radiophonic Workshop” which has been playing festivals including Glastonbury and Womad and composing new music including the score for the recent feature film by Matthew Holness, “Possum”. The reissue of the LP has been pressed on White Vinyl and comes in a limited edition number of just 500 copies. Audio quality over its 12 tracks still sounds remarkably good, with excellent packaging and printed inner sleeve. Catalogue Number: SILLP1543

On the same date, Silva Screen also released Through a Glass Darkly. Peter Howell joined the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1974, coming from a career in various psychedelic folk bands, which saw him record five albums with fellow musician John Ferdinando. He composed his first Doctor Who output in ’75 in the form of additional incidental music and electronic overdubs for “Revenge of the Cybermen”, and Special Sound for “Planet of Evil”. In 1980, he was asked by the programme’s then new producer, John Nathan-Turner, to update the iconic Doctor Who theme. The new arrangement appeared on that year’s “The Leisure Hive”, continuing to be used through Tom Baker’s remaining series as the Doctor and throughout the Peter Davison period. “Through A Glass Darkly” was originally released in 1978 as a standalone studio album by Howell in collaboration with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The six original instrumental compositions (one of which is 19 minutes long) flaunt a progressive rock influence as well as the distinctive electronic sound of the RWS. “The Astronauts” (track 5, side 2) appeared again as a B side to the 1980 single release of his version of the Doctor Who theme. The reissue of the LP has been pressed on Transparent Vinyl and again is strictly limited to just 500 copies. Audio quality throughout its 6 tracks is superb. At just 38 minutes, it’s a pity Silva Screen couldn’t dig out a few additional bonus tracks as I’m sure plenty of the same still exits. Like “Fourth Dimension”, the album’s packaging and printed inner sleeve are of the highest quality. Catalogue Number: SILLP1544

Check out both of these releases at https://www.silvascreen.com/vinyl/

BY MARK MAWSTON

In the music scene of the 60’s you had two bands that stood on their own: the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. In films of the same period and into the early 70s, Amicus and Hammer were the Beatles and the Stones of the horror film genre. At their best, both reflected the popular tastes of era as it pertained to movies of this type. The early 70s saw creative highlights. With Hammer it was the Carmilla trilogy, Vampire Circus, Captain Kronos and, with Amicus, we had the splendid portmanteau films which had started with Dr Terrors House of Horrors and reaching their creative peak at the beginning of the new decade. Two of the company’s best efforts are now released by Second Sight on Blu-ray as stand-alone discs after appearing as part of a boxed set last year, The House That Dripped Blood and Asylum-the keystones on which Amicus based their famous trilogy of Tales from The Crypt, The Vault of Horror and From Beyond The Grave, all of which have huge cult followings to this day.

The difference between the Beatles and the Stones was that they looked and sounded very different whereas Amicus and Hammer tended to cross pollinate in the public perception. This is probably due to the fact that Amicus used many of the actors who had made their name at Hammer, such as Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Ingrid Pitt, yet it was Amicus that offered Cushing some of his most memorable roles, which is another one of the reasons why these films are held in great affection by fans. Who can ever forget Cushing’s transformation as Arthur Grimsdyke from Tales from The Crypt, for example? The main difference between the two was that Amicus was more hex than sex, driven by its producers to make their films more family friendly, as in The House That Dripped Blood, though that didn’t make any of the Robert Bloch portmanteau films any less scary, as in Asylum.

Although The House That Dripped Blood is seen by many critics as the best of the Amicus portmanteau films, its 1972’s Asylum that has always held a special place in my heart and is still to this day one of my favourite horror films ever, mainly due to The Weird Tailor segment (again featuring Cushing) which simply terrified me as a child, in the same way the similar- looking Autons had done in Dr. Who. Perhaps it’s just down to the fact that mannequins were something I’d see in every store front window when my Mum dragged me shopping, as opposed to vampires or killer plants. It’s the things from the real world transferred to the reel world that frighten you most when you’re a kid and I couldn’t walk past our local Burton’s department store windows for ages without cupping my hands over my eyes to avoid seeing the snappy 70s style suits on display on those mustachioed tailor’s dummies. (Looking back, I’d probably do the same, as those big collared and flared nylon suit styles now look just as frightening without the mannequins!) The main difference with these new Blu-ray releases, bar the great transfers, is the wonderful artwork that adorns their covers by legendary horror poster artist Graham Humphreys. These covers also appear in his latest movie poster book, Hung, Drawn and Executed, that I recommend all horror fans to add to their collections. It contains images that will have the collector salivating.

As a horror poster collector myself, I always found the original 1970s quads and one sheet posters lacking when it came to these two iconic titles. So with that in mind, I asked Graham how he approached both of these cult classics when it came to designing the reversible covers on the new Blu-ray releases.

‘The House that Dripped Blood’ and ‘Asylum’ are two films that are hardwired into my brain. Like all the Amicus anthology films, each has its strengths and weaknesses, but remain totally entertaining, packed with unforgettable images and characters.

It’s always a dilemma when presented with such well-loved genre films, how to approach the subjects to meet the expectations of the customer. In each instance, the original posters are well known, but my job is to provide an alternative. With anthologies, you either try to make a visual summary using the wrap-around theme, or attempt to portray all the content within.

Watching the films with fresh eyes, it struck me how powerful the character performances had grown. I wanted to celebrate the raft of fantastic actors that embody all the breadth and eccentricities of UK acting talent, still towering above the self-obsessed, surgically enhanced, botoxed mediocrity of current mainstream screen candy.

Faces that are etched with pain, abandon, addiction and cunning... these are what made these films so visceral and compelling, that’s why I decided to focus on the faces rather than settings, props or symbolism. It’s a dark parody of ‘heads-in-the-sky’ photocomps, delivered in graveyard colours with funeral pomp.

BY JOE ELLIOTT

The list of 25 films added to the prestigious National Film Registry in 2019 includes the 1957 Disney classic Old Yeller, starring Tommy Kirk, Fess Parker, Dorothy McGuire, and Anthony Corcoran. The story, based on the novel by Fred Gibson, is about a young boy on the Texas frontier named Travis Coates (Kirk), who is left in charge of looking after his mother and younger brother when his father (Parker) goes away on a business trip. Travis reluctantly accepts a large yellow dog into the family circle after the stray follows his little brother (Corcoran) home one day. Despite his initial doubts, the boy comes to see the dog's value when Old Yeller, as they name him, proves himself resourceful, loyal and brave. In the course of the story, he stoutly defends Travis and the family against a series of life-threating marauders, including a bear, a ferocious pig and, most significantly, a wolf. The story has a bittersweet conclusion but ends on a note of optimism. Old Yeller is the friend and companion that Travis always needed and wanted, but who in the end he must give up. The lessons "that ol' yeller dog" taught him about friendship and sacrifice are ones that will remain with him for the rest of his life. Of the many "family pictures" that the Disney Studios produced in the 1950s and 1960s, Old Yeller ranks among the most memorable and best-loved. As is the case with all these stories, the plot is simple and straightforward, with the focus mostly on the action sequences. The human relationships are largely uncomplicated, positive and close-knit: it is the family we all wish we had had growing up. Old Yeller’s selection to the Library of Congress’s Film Registry, a preservation organization that recognizes “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant films,” is a good one. It belongs there.

Up until the time Old Yeller was released, Disney hadn't ventured very far into the live-action genre. Instead, it relied on its famed animation department to continue cranking out the hits, such as Cinderella, Lady and the Tramp and Sleeping Beauty (another 2019 Registry inductee). However, the enormous popular success of Old Yeller convinced studio executives, namely, Walt Disney himself, to put more of them into production, including Zorro the Avenger (1959), Kidnapped (1960), The Sign of Zorro (1960), and Swiss Family Robinson (1960), the latter also co-starring Tommy Kirk. All of these features, as well as dozens of others to follow, proved to be great crowd-pleasers. The studio's expanding film vault also provided a rich source of titles for the popular weekly NBC show, The Wonderful World of Disney. Walt Disney was not only king of animation during this period, but he also ruled the roost when it came to providing the public with warm family movie dramas. The studio was especially adept at producing what came to be popularly known as "the wilderness adventure,” tales about American frontier families braving the wilds to build a better life for themselves.

Wonderful World was where I first saw Old Yeller. I had read the Gibson book and loved it, and the movie version was all I could have hoped it would be. At the center of it all, besides Old Yeller himself, was Tommy Kirk's character, Travis, who lived the kind of fantasy boyhood I could only dream about. Every day seemed to bring a new adventure, one filled with drama and a cast of colorful characters. Kirk was so likable and convincing in the role that it was easy to imagine that it was all real. Thousands of young boys, including me, longed to be him, or if not him exactly, then at least his best friend. He was brave without being overly reckless, daring and resourceful, and kind and considerate without ever coming across as too goody-goody. Whatever defined the myth of the "all-American boy" in post-World War II America, Tommy seemed to embody it.

A few years later, he co-starred in another Disney hit, Swiss Family Robinson (1960), the story of a family shipwrecked on a remote tropical island. Once again, the emphasis was on high adventure and the importance of family.  As he did in Old Yeller, Tommy brought believability to his character of Ernest, the impetuous younger brother of Fritz (James MacArthur). Swiss Family Robinson proved an even bigger commercial success than Old Yeller. I once showed SFR to a group of fourth-graders. I wasn't sure how they would react, given the fact that the movie was, by then, an old one, and the actors unknown to them. As it turned out, I had nothing to worry about. The kids loved the movie and sat glued to the screen from start to finish.

Tommy would go on to appear in other Disney hits, including The Absent-Minded Professor and Son of Flubber. He later reprised his role as Travis Coates in the Old Yeller sequel, Savage Sam (1963). He was named a Disney Legend in 2006, a performance hall of fame which recognizes individuals who have made significant and lasting contributions to the Disney brand. It was a well-earned honor for an actor who gained iconic status as one of the studio's most beloved stars.

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