Scores
of modestly budgeted, black-and-white Noir movies about gangsters, cops,
private eyes, and murderous love affairs were produced in France in the 1950s,
but only a few crossed the Atlantic in dubbed prints.Some were dumped in second-run movie houses,
where they were often labeled and advertised “for adults only,” emphasising
their sexual content (tame now but steamy back then, when TV routinely depicted
married couples in separate beds).I
discussed one such Noir, released in France in 1959 as “Du Rififi Chez Les
Femmes” and in the U.S. in 1962 as “Riff Raff Girls,” HERE.In the later ‘60s, others were bundled with
other foreign B-movies for broadcast on local television stations, hardly a
prestigious showcase either.Coming off
the midnight shift, a bleary-eyed factory worker might see the end of an Eddie
Constantine movie with mediocre dubbing in a late-nite time slot, just before
the station signed off for the night.With a mug that looked like a bad night on the town, Eddie was even more
popular than Humphrey Bogart in the France of the Charles De Gaulle era, but
his tough-guy pictures as wisecracking, two-fisted FBI agent Lemmy Caution
hardly made a ripple here.To the extent
Constantine and Caution are remembered in the U.S. at all, it’s because Eddie
reprised the role in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Alphaville” (1965).But “Alphaville,” although wonderful, was a
New Wave absurdist parody and not part of the original series.
Only
with the advent of home video and social media since the 1990s have films like
“Touchez Pas au Grisbi” (1954), “Bob Le Flambeur” (1956), “Any Number Can Win”
(1963), and “Le Circle Rouge” (1970) been rescued from obscurity, packaged with
care, and re-evaluated by a modern, more receptive audience.With many more pictures of this type yet to
be rediscovered and restored, the release of “French Noir Collection” on
Blu-ray is a step in the right direction.The Kino Lorber Studio Classics set includes three dramas that will be
new to all but the most tenacious fans of the genre.
In
“Speaking of Murder” (1957), Louis Bertain (Jean Gabin) seems to be a stolid,
middle-aged Parisian whose garage caters to high-end customers.The appearance is deceiving.Louis, an ambitious high roller, needs more
money than the garage earns.He makes it
as the leader of a four-man theft ring, targeting deliveries of cash and
securities at banks. The robberies are
grab-and-run jobs, based on insider tips about delivery schedules, and
carefully planned with the exacting attention to detail that fans expect from
stories like this about heists.Louis
and his partners Fredo, Pepito, and Raymond have been together for more than
ten years, but fractures have begun to appear.The volatile Pepito (Lino Ventura) distrusts Fredo, who developed a bad
case of the shakes on their last job.Worse,Pepito also has suspicious
eyes on Louis’ younger brother, Pierre (Marcel Bozzuffi), a petty offender
vulnerable to police pressure.For good
measure, Louis is determined to retire after the next job, and we know how that
usually turns out in gangster pictures.With a sliced-to-the-bone plot and almost documentarian black-and-white
cinematography on the streets of Paris, the film is as good as the genre gets,
even if it is saddled with a lacklustre title, apparently tacked on for release
in English-speaking markets back in the day.“Speaking of Murder’ would lead you to expect a sedate episode of “Columbo”
or “Murder,
She Wrote,” not a hardboiled heist drama like this one.The original French title, “Le Rouge Est Mis,” or “The Red Is On” (referring
to the light that comes on outside Louis’ garage when the gang meets there)
isn’t any more compelling in direct translation.If Marcel Bozzuffi looks familiar, you
probably remember his later role in a much more famous crime drama.In “The French Connection” (1971), the
prolific French actor played Pierre Nicoli or “Frog Two,” the sniper who flees
from Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle in William Friedkin’s iconic car and train
chase.
The
other two films in the Kino Lorber set follow the pattern of James M. Cain’s
“The Postman Always Rings Twice” and “Double Indemnity,” in which murder
results when one spouse cheats on another with an extramarital lover.In “Back to the Wall” (original title, “Le
Dos au Mur,” 1958), Jacques (Gerard Oury), a wealthy construction tycoon,
discovers that his wife Gloria (Jeanne Moreau) has resumed an old affair with
Yves, a small-time actor.The vengeful
millionaire assumes a false identity to blackmail the lovers and humiliate his
errant wife.He doesn’t need the
blackmail payments; he just wants to see her squirm.It isn’t a spoiler to note that Yves is
murdered in the course of the scheme, since the film opens with Jacques
disposing of his body.We presume that
the millionaire was the murderer, but if so, how does that square with his
extortion game, once it begins to unfold in a long back story we follow through
Jacques’ eyes?In “Witness in the City”
(“Un Témoin Dans La Ville,” 1959), another millionaire, Pierre, kills his
mistress Jeanne by throwing her off a moving train.In turn, Jeanne’s husband Ancelin (Lino
Ventura again—the Roy Scheider of French crime pictures) murders Pierre after
the millionaire is acquitted in court for Jeanne’s death.Ancelin thinks he’s committed the perfect
crime when he makes Pierre’s death scene look like a suicide instead of a
murder, but as someone tells him, “No crime is perfect.”Ancelin becomes desperate when a cab driver
sees him outside Pierre’s house, just before the dead man’s body is found. Since the driver was a witness, Ancelin
decides he has to get rid of him too.The film reaches for the tension of an Alfred Hitchcock or Fritz Lang
picture as Ancelin stalks the cabby, but doesn’t quite succeed; but then,
nobody ever quite matched Hitchcock or Lang.Still, both it and “Back to the Wall” will be welcomed by suspense fans
in search of obscure works in the genre, and both benefit from glistening
nighttime scenes in actual Parisian locations.Nostalgists will enjoy the wet streets and neon at actual locations, the
Midcentury interiors, trenchcoats—plenty of trenchcoats—and classic product
placements in all three films.When was
the last time, if ever, you saw an Esso sign?
The
three movies, licensed from Gaumont Films, are presented in sharp, restored
prints, with French voice tracks and crisp English subtitles.One of the two discs in the set contains
“Speaking of Murder” alone, and the second contains the other two films.Trailers for “Speaking of Murder” and “Back
to the Wall” are included.The Blu-ray
can be ordered HERE.
Now,
when can we see a Lemmy Caution Collection of comparable quality?
Fred Blosser is the author of "Sons of Ringo: The Great Spaghetti Western Heroes". Click here to order from Amazon)
Orchestra
Performs Collection of His Most Memorable Works
With
Select Scores Accompanied by Film Clips
Ken-David
Masur Conducts in His NY Phil Debut
Williams
Himself To Take the Podium
Special
Appearance by Steven Spielberg
Wu Tsai Theater, David Geffen Hall, April 25, 2023
The New York
Philharmonic celebrates the career of John Williams in its Spring Gala: Celebrating
John Williams, April 25, 2023,at the Wu Tsai Theater, David
Geffen Hall. Conductor Ken-David Masur, the son of the late NY Phil Music
Director Emeritus Kurt Masur, makes his debut with the Orchestra leading a
selection of Williams’s most memorable compositions. Williams himself conducts a
portion of the concert, and special guest Steven Spielberg, the director with
whom Williams has collaborated on 29 feature films, introduces some of these
selections, some of them performed live as film clips are projected above the
stage.
Gala events
include a cocktail reception from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. on the Leon and Norma
Hess Grand Promenade; premium seating for the concert, which begins at 7:30
p.m.; and a seated dinner immediately following the performance, attended by
the artists, also on the Hess Grand Promenade. Gala dress will be cocktail
attire. The Honorary Gala Chair is Steven Spielberg. The Gala Co-Chairs are
Kristen and Alexander Klabin, Harold Mitchell AC, James L. and Margo M.
Nederlander, and Carol and Chuck Schaefer.
Tickets Tickets
to New York Philharmonic performances may be purchased online at nyphil.org or by calling (212)
875-5656, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday; 1:00 p.m. to 6:00
p.m. Saturday; and noon to 5:00 p.m. Sunday. Tickets may also be purchased at the
Welcome Center at David Geffen Hall. The Welcome Center opens at 10:00
a.m. Monday through Saturday, and at noon on Sunday. On performance evenings,
the Welcome Center closes one-half hour after performance time; other evenings
it closes at 6:00 p.m.
Availability for the Spring Gala: Celebrating
John Williams is limited.
For
more information about the entire Gala evening, which includes a cocktail
reception, the 7:30 p.m. concert, and a post-concert dinner, please call the
Office of Special Events at (646) 661-2471, or email specialevents@nyphil.org.
For
press tickets, contact Lanore Carr at (212) 875-5714 or carrl@nyphil.org.
Event Listing
SPRING GALA: CELEBRATING JOHN
WILLIAMS
Wu Tsai
Theater, David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center
Tuesday,
April 25, 2023, 7:30 p.m.
Ken-David Masur, Conductor (New
York Philharmonic debut)
John Williams, conductor
Steven Spielberg, special guest
The
New York Philharmonic performs a selection of Williams’s most memorable
compositions, including selections from the scores to Raiders of the Lost
Ark, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and Jurassic Park, along
with other works.
ALL PROGRAMS SUBJECT TO CHANGE
Programs
are made possible, in part, by the New
York State Council on the Arts with the
support
of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
ViaVision/Imprint is releasing the superb 1984 film "The Bounty" starring Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins as a limited edition (1500) Blu-ray. Here are the details:
THEY BEGAN THEIR EPIC VOYAGE AS
FRIENDS… IT ENDED IN HATRED AND BLOODSHED
William Bligh (Anthony Hopkins) was a
real-life sea captain who, in 1787, steered HMS Bounty on a 27,000 mile voyage
into danger, chaos and madness. After 31 days battling severe sea squalls and
Bligh’s ever-increasing cruelty, the weary crew is relieved to land on the
tropical island of Tahiti. But soon their tyrannical captain wants to set sail
again and the desperate men turn to first mate Fletcher Christian (Mel Gibson)
to help take the ship by force.
Originally, “The Bounty” was a
longstanding project of Director David Lean who ultimately left the project in
1981 and was replaced by Australian Director Roger Donaldson.
Starring: Mel Gibson, Anthony Hopkins,
Daniel Day-Lewis, Liam Neeson, Laurence Olivier, and Edward Fox.
Strictly Limited Edition Hardbox set
with unique artwork & booklet featuring the original press kit. 1500 copies
only.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Disc One:
1080p High-definition presentation on Blu-ray from
a 4K scan of the original negative
Audio Commentary by director Roger Donaldson,
producer Bernard Williams, and production designer John Graysmark
Audio Commentary by historical consultant Stephen
Walters
Making of The Bounty – 1984 documentary narrated by Edward Fox
2004 Visual Essay narrated by Stephen Walters
Isolated Score (in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo)
Audio English DTS-HD 5.1 Surround + LPCM 2.0 Stereo
Original Aspect ratio 2.35:1
English subtitles
Disc Two: Bonus Disc
NEW Interview with Director Roger Donaldson
NEW Featurette on the history of film adaptations of “The Bounty“
NEW Featurette on the Vangelis film score
A Fated Ship – 1981 documentary surrounding the construction of
“The Bounty” replica ship and the early development of the film
In Bligh’s Wake – 1984 documentary charting the voyage from New
Zealand to Tahiti to deliver “The Bounty” replica for shooting the
film
NEW Interview with Maritime historian & film producer Stephen
Walters
NEW 90 min feature with the cast & crew
Any pre-order titles will be
dispatched in the week leading up to its aforementioned release date. Special
features and artwork are subject to change.
Note: Imprint limited editions tend to sell out quickly. The Blu-ray is Region-Free.
Keep in mind that prices are quoted in Australian dollars. Use a currency converter to see what the price is in your national currency.
In early December of 1947 Box Office made note that producer Ben Stoloff’s Eagle Lion “film
factory” – an American arm of Britain’s Rank Organisation - was to begin production
of two new pictures.The first was Brooklyn U.S.A, a dramatic film to
recount the Ebbets Field barrier-shattering saga of Brooklyn Dodger Jackie
Robinson.The second was Bernard
Vorhaus’s The Spiritualist, a mystery
to serve as a starring vehicle for Turhan Bey, the suave actor having recently been
released from his contract at Universal.December of ’47 had already been a busy period for Eagle Lion, the
company having rushed through the noir
crime-dramas The Cobra Strikes and Assigned to Danger. Stoloff assured the studio would remain busy following
the holidays.Principal photography on The Spiritualist was scheduled to
commence in January of 1948.
The primary castings for The Spiritualist were soon being announced in the trades.Lynn Bari was cast in the principal role of Christine
Faber, a grieving well-to-do widow who lives in a sprawling mansion on the Pacific
cliffs.Her proximity to the ocean is a
mixed blessing.Faber hears the ghostly voice
of her beloved dead husband Paul (Donald Curtis) – reportedly killed in a fiery
automobile accident -rolling in with the evening tide.The role of the lawyer Martin Abbott, the
kind current paramour of the widow Faber, was filled on January 10 when it was
announced that Richard Carlson had been cast as the “top male” in the feature.
The earliest scenario of The Spiritualist was drafted by Crane Wilbur, a journeyman writer-director-actor-playwright
who had been kicking around Hollywood since the silent era.Muriel Roy Bolton was commissioned to write
the screenplay from Crane’s treatment.Director
Vorhaus thought the ideas behind The
Spiritualist intriguing, but was of the opinion Bolton’s script lacked
“characterization and humor.”The
screenplay’s absence of humor was odd, especially as Bolton was primarily known
for her scripting of several “Henry Aldrich” comedies of the 1940s.In any case, Vorhaus belatedly brought Brit Ian
McLellan Hunter onto the project. Vorhaus was familiar with Hunter’s work: the
two had collaborated on a trio of films in the years 1939-1940.In Vorhaus’s memory, Hunter’s reworking of
the script necessitated the drafted scenarist to labor a full week’s time,
working both “day and night,” to tidy and tighten things up.
The basic premise of The
Spiritualist was Christine’s falling for the con of the flimflamming
trickster known simply as “Alexis” (Turhan Bey).Taking advantage of his grieving clients,
Alexis – whose calling card advertises his services as “Psychic Consultant” -
uses all sorts of supernatural malarkey to convince his clientele that he
possesses “secrets of the outer world.”Amongst his subterfuges to gain “insight” into his patsies is a rigged
spirit cabinet, a closed-circuit television monitor, wire recorders, room
temperature regulators, and projection cameras.He even secrets an earpiece beneath his turban, a hidden confederate
slipping him information from a remote location.
The influence of Alexis’s “readings” on the emotionally-distressed
Christine raises the concern – and suspicion – of boyfriend Martin and Faber’s younger
sister, Janet (Cathy O’Donnell).They
hire a private detective (Harry Mendoza) to investigate the background of this
alleged “spookchaser.” But there’s a second, and more nefarious, development they
miss entirely.They soon learn that the emotional
manipulation of Christine is more than a simple money-grabbing swindle.The initial ruse serves only as a prelude to a
far darker plan orchestrated by a second mysterious figure in the shadows.
Just as The
Spiritualist was starting production, a United Press Hollywood
correspondent reported that the office of producer Stoloff was under
siege.Hundreds of phone calls and
letters were – reportedly – pouring in from enraged members of the National
Associations of American Spiritualists as well as from other devout
practitioners.It’s hard to separate the
reality from the ballyhoo of such reporting, but Stoloff allegedly tried to salve
the fears of complainants by assuring his film was only interested in exposing
“crooked” mediums, not all.But a
secretary at Eagle Lion suggested the angry spiritualists were not easily
appeased.She reported that, “Mr.
Stoloff’s received countless letters placing a ‘hex’ on him.”
On May Day of 1948, it was announced The Spiritualist was to be released on July 7, the trades
trumpeting the Hollywood’s summer schedule of 1948 was shaping up to be a more
profitable season than that of the previous year.(In actuality, the film’s release appears to
have been pushed back to early August).In any case, the “hex” put on the film seems to have been at least
partly successful.Though Variety was impressed, describing the
picture as “a whale of a yarn,” “expertly directed” and featuring “topflight
performances,” exhibitors and audiences seemed nonplussed as the film rolled
out regionally across the U.S. and overseas throughout 1948-1949.
London’s
Picturegoer thought the film, a “Poor spiritualistic
melodrama, wholly unconvincing, with the artists concerned completely at sea
owing to the ineffectiveness of both characterization and direction.”One exhibitor told Box Office sighed that while The
Spiritualist had attracted only an “average draw” during screenings, he
thought the film deserved better.It was,
in his opinion, well done if perhaps reminiscent of that same year’s noir Sleep, My Love featuring Claudette
Colbert and Robert Cummings.
The producers of The
Spiritualist – mindful of their accounting ledgers - were of the surprised opinion
that such superstitious belief in mediums and séances was more deeply entrenched
than anyone guessed.So, in February of 1949
with plenty of markets still unvisited, Eagle Lion made a decision to re-title The Spiritualist to The Amazing Mr. X.In the
end, the name change did not appear to make much of a difference at the box
office.By May of 1949 the film was
still on the circuit but still not doing particularly well.
One Kentucky-based exhibitor decried the picture’s walk-up
business as “simply awful.”He also
opined the film’s lack of dramatic action – as well as “poor” sound and too-dark
photography - was to blame.He counseled
other “small town exhibitors” to “lay off this one” as it “laid an egg at the
box office.”With the film was still
making the rounds in August of ‘49, other exhibitors complained the picture,
while generally solid, was “too talky in parts and the sound was very
low.”It was thought the spiritualism hoax
was given up to early in the film, removing any sense of a suspenseful reveal.Both were valid criticisms.It’s true that most of the films on-screen
time was consigned to intimate parlour discussions.
The film suffered overseas as well.In England, the Rank Organisation and British
Board of Film Censors were also inundated with complaints by spiritualists, though
censors ultimately chose to allow the film to be exhibited as issued.This caused an aggrieved “former president of
the Spiritualist National Union” to sulk, “I am amazed that such a malicious
and offensive statement about spiritualism should be passed for exhibition
purposes.”
Though not a lost classic, The Spiritualist/The Amazing Mr. X has a lot going for it.The film is wonderfully shot and the film’s spooky
and spectral optical effects are certainly effective.In an interview with the Australian
journalist John Baxter, Vorhaus gave all credit to Director of Photography John
Alton for the film’s dark and moody visuals.Vorhaus recalled Alton as, “faster and more talented than any other
cameraman I’d ever worked with, partly because he used so little lighting… He
regarded shadow and darkness as just as important as light.So you never had a fully lit set; you had
this mix of highlights and darkness.”The film is also made interesting by Vorhaus’s interesting camera
placements.The film is sprinkled with a
number of creative attention-getting and undeniably unusual camera angles.The film’s acting troupe are uniformly
top-notch in their performances.
The
Spiritualist would sadly be among the last few films
Vorhaus would direct in America – or anywhere.On April 25, 1951, director Edward Dmytryk – a member of the infamous Hollywood
Ten who served a six-month prison sentence for his “uncooperative” testimonials
- chose to salvage his career by ingratiating himself with the House
Un-American Committee.In new testimony,
Dmytryk gave the Committee the names of seven members of the Screen Directors
Guild who he alleged were members of the Communist Party in 1945.Vorhaus’s name was among them.
With the Rosenberg and Alger Hiss cases being reported
daily and the war in Korea grabbing headlines, Vorhaus saw little reason to
stay in Hollywood.The director chose to
live out his life as an American exile, doing a bit of film work in Europe
before quitting the movie business altogether.He would later settle in London and be granted British citizenship.There was no reason or benefit of returning
to America - at least not at the height of red scare paranoia. It was our loss, as well as his.
This Blu-ray issue of The
Amazing Mr. X from the folks at The Film Detective is top-notch, a 4K
transfer mastered from restored original 35mm elements and presented in an
aspect ratio of 1.37:1.The B&W film
looks wonderful, film grain present and Alton’s exquisite photography bringing
out the almost unnaturally soft facial features of the film’s featured players,
especially the ladies.Special features
include Daniel Griffith’s interesting twenty-minute featurette, Mysteries Exposed.The documentary offers a brief primer on the
history of spiritualism and its subsequent exploitation by filmmakers: from the
silent short camera trickeries of George Méliès to RKO’s You’ll Find Out (1940) through such Universal features as The Devil Commands (1941) to various entries
in their Inner Sanctum series to
Paramount’s The Uninvited (1944).
The documentary features some interesting background on
spiritualism, séances and mediums – and of the practice’s historical debunkers,
many of whom were magicians wise to their slight-of-hand methodologies.The featurette offers commentaries courtesy
of Lisa Morton, author of Calling the
Spirits: A History of Séance’s, and of film historian C. Courtney
Joyner.The set also includes a
commentary by film scholar Jason A. Ney and ten-page booklet, mostly recounting
the star-crossed career of Turhan Bey, written by Don Stradley.As always, The Film Detective delivers a very
nice, lovingly assembled package of a film too often misused due to its public-domain
status.
The scenario of Mad
Love was adapted from Maurice Renard’s Grand
Guignol thriller of 1920Les Mains d'Orlac (The Hands of Orlac).Renard (born 1875) was an author of
science-fiction and fantasy tales.Not
surprisingly, he was an ardent admirer of literary forebears Edgar Allan Poe
and H.G. Wells.Both of these authors –
similarly to Renard – contributed to the pulp publications of their day.Les Mains d'Orlac was
Renard’s third pulp to be published. It was also his most famous.
Renard’s novel tells the story of a world-famous pianist,
Stephen Orlac, whose hands are tragically severed in a train wreck outside
Paris.A surgeon, Dr. Gogol, grafts a
new set of hands on the gifted Orlac, having not advised the pianist his “new” hands
once belonged to a notorious – and recently guillotined - murderer.Orlac is, not unreasonably, frightened when
he discovers the grafts are seemingly directing him to do evil things, the
bidding of the devil.
Upon Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s announcement that esteemed director
and cinematographer Karl Freund was planning on shooting the first sound
version of The Hands of Orlac – a
silent featuring Conrad Veidt had already seen light as early as 1924 – the
studio’s publicity department went into full press.They excitingly described Renard’s yarn, as “the
weirdest and most novel of all thriller mystery stories.”
Freund very much wanted the Hungarian actor Peter Lorre
to play Doctor Gogol, the mad surgeon.Lorre had already established a reputation as an impressive figure in
European – and especially German – cinema.But following his international success as the psychotic child murderer
of Fritz Lang’s grim M (1931) and in Alfred
Hitchcock’s production of The Man Who
Knew Too Much (1934), executives at Columbia were eager to put the exotic Lorre
under contract for his first U.S. film assignment.
They were, perhaps, too
eager to bring him to Hollywood.Columbia had not yet found a project for him – and the actor’s command
of the English language was still in a nascent stage.Though offered a role in one of the studio’s adventure
dramas featuring action-star Jack Holt, Lorre demurred: he wasn’t interested in
such low-brow fare.He was pressing
Columbia to cast him in a more high-minded production, a film for the ages: an adaptation
of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.Lorre was also insistent that esteemed
director Josef von Sternberg should helm the prospective epic.
There was a problem with this demand. Columbia’s co-founder and president, Harry
Cohn, wasn’t interested in such a project – nor was von Sternberg for that
matter.This resulted in Lorre sitting
in a state of contractual limbo of some “eight months,” at least by the actor’s
recollection.So it came as a relief
when MGM approached Cohn and Columbia asking for an inter-studio loan of Lorre
for Mad Love.Though not particularly a fan of horror
movies - then a recent box office rage thanks to Universal’s Frankenstein and Dracula pictures – the actor agreed to the one-off trade.
There was one condition of acceptance: that Columbia put Crime and Punishment on their production
schedule of 1935.Cohn agreed, without
enthusiasm, to greenlight the project.Though a New York Times interview
suggested Lorre’s subsequent relationship with Von Sternberg was a “happy one,”
the sentiment may not have been reciprocal.Though Von Sternberg would express admiration that Lorre was the only
actor on set who had actually read Crime
and Punishment, he felt the actor was completely miscast, “unsuitable” for
the role he was awarded.
In any event, on April 23, 1935, Variety reported Metro having secured Lorre’s loan from Columbia.Things moved quickly following that
announcement.By May 1st, MGM
had signed Ted Healy, Billy Gilbert and May Beatty to the cast.Screenwriter John L. Balderston was tapped to
freshen up the adaptive scenario of Guy Endore and the actual script of P.J.
Wolfson.Another source would report
that actress Francis Drake, on loan from Paramount, was also to be brought
aboard, as Yvonne, a Grand Guignol performer
in Paris and the primary target of Gogol’s romantic overtures and obsessions.
The final principal casting announcement was reported on
May 2 when Colin Clive – Dr. Henry Frankenstein himself - was conscripted to
play Yvonne’s husband, the amputee Stephen Orlac.With their star-studded cast in place, on May
3rd, Greg Toland was announced as a photographer on the project.Toland would work alongside both Chester Lyons
and director Freund.Freund was, of
course, the acclaimed cinematographer of such classics as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) and Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931).
Freund was certainly taking the Mad Love project seriously.On
May 8, Variety reported he and Lorre
had visited California’s Lutheran Hospital, sitting quietly through several surgeries
“to get atmosphere” for the forthcoming production of Mad Love.A subsequent item
in the Los Angeles Times noted the
pair attended the gruesome surgeries as the invited guests of Dr. Albert and
Francis Alton.It was explained the
director and his star were to witness “the performing of several operations… in
order to study certain technical details of surgery for the picture.”
Though Lorre was pleased to be in front of cameras again,
he made it plain early on that he wasn’t a fan of horror pictures, steadfast in
his conviction that he would not be typecast as an actor of the genre.He needn’t have worried as a variety of interesting
work offers were coming his way.Just as
production on Mad Love was set to
roll, the actor was visited by the British producer Michael Balcon.Balcon had been spending a lot of time in
Hollywood looking to ingratiate himself with U.S. film executives.On May 6, 1935, Balcon announced he had managed
to sign Lorre and reigning boogeyman Boris Karloff for a pair of London-based projects
– both of which would come to fruition:Lorre
would act a second time for Hitchcock in Secret
Agent (1936), Karloff for Robert Stevenson’s The Man Who Changed His Mind (Gaumont-British Film Corporation,
1936).
With some of the film earnings and personal savings he
had accrued, it was reported that the savvy, self-starting Lorre had recently purchased
no fewer than three stage plays of European origin for development as possible
Hollywood films.The scripts, it was
noted, would be peddled to producers only “on the condition that he is spotted
in if and when made.”But first the
famously diminutive, pop-eyed actor, once described by Charlie Chaplin, as “the
world’s greatest living character actor,” had to get through the filming of the
Mad Love chiller.
Members of the Hollywood press were invited to visit the
set on May 8, the first day of shooting. Gossip wag George Lewis who, like
Lorre, was no fan of horror movies, arrived just as poor Francis Drake was
trussed to a wheel and branded with a hot iron at a grim Grand Guignol staging at Paris’s Théâtre
des Horreurs.Lewis made
note that Freund appeared “quite cheerful” as the macabre scenario played out
before him.Freund trumpeted his picture
was to be “the most colossal horror yet presented to the civilized world.”But following the preview screening of Mad Love on July 1, 1935, critic Lewis remained
nonplussed, sniffing the film only “capable of scaring to death at least a few
timid people.”
A more savvy reporter from the Oakland Tribune, also in attendance at the first-day shoot,saw MGM’s renewed interest in horror
pictures as the studio’s attempt to give Universal “a little competition in the
matter of fantastic films and regain, if possible, the position it held when
Lon Chaney was alive and Tod Browning in his prime.”Both Universal and Paramount had done very
well with their recent chillers, and MGM sensibly wanted a little taste.
Nothing if not a method actor, Lorre consented to shave
his head for the role of Dr. Gogol.Such
a dramatic shorn required the actor to visit the studio barbershop every
morning prior to shooting.Resting
between takes on set, Lorre needed to apply a wet chamois cloth on his eggshell
skull to protect him from the burn of the hot klieg lights hanging
overhead.
The consummate cinematographer, Freund expertly executed
an eerie monochrome contrasting of “hard lights and shadows” to create a moody
and mysterious ambience - one befitting Gogol’s personal gallery of
horrors.Continuing to do his part, the
roly-poly Lorre, thinking himself too heavy-set to play the mad surgeon
convincingly, went on a crash diet.On
alternate days, the actor would eat only fruit, then vegetables, then dried
meat, then boiled potatoes.He reportedly
dropped a total of nine pounds in four days’ time.
One journalist would go on to describe Lorre as “the
finest scarer of woman-and-children and even grown up men since Lon
Chaney.”Which was high praise
indeed.Chaney’s reputation in and around
Hollywood was as exalted as ever despite his having passed on August 26, 1930,
age 47.Though Lorre graciously
acknowledged the compliment, he nevertheless was of the opinion that grotesque
make-up appliances often disguised “an excuse for an ability to act… An actor
should find his expressions in his naked face.”The one exception to that rule, Lorre then sensibly corrected, was the
great Chaney since “He was an artist.”As a recent transplant to Tinseltown it was best not to kick up dust at
the expense of one of Hollywood’s most mourned and respected figures.
Despite Lorre’s disdain of make-up appliances, there was
a lot of press in the lead-up to the production of Mad Love that the filmmakers planned on using a series of Grand Guignol style masks in their
upcoming production.“Intensive
experiment went into the perfection of the new masks,” noted the Los Angeles Times, suggesting such
ghoulish set decorations were “often suggested in fiction but never before
worked out on a practical basis.”Such
artful masks are scattered about and
used as macabre decoration for the Théâtre
des Horreurs sequences near the film’s beginning.Otherwise they play little role in the
storyline.
June 15 would mark the final day of shooting, the
Hollywood press again invited to attend.It was a less exciting day to be on set, the film crew mostly finishing
up on various insert shots, the journalists watching Lorre’s double, “Raspy” Rasputin,
menacing Drake’s distressed double.The
genuine Lorre was on set as well, pacing about in silence, occasionally
breaking a studious concentration to relax and joke with members of the crew
with whom he had become friendly.
Following an industry preview of the film at Glendale’s
Alexander Theatre, Billboard was
certain Mad Love would score at the
box office, citing the “masterful performance” of Lorre in his U.S. film
debut.The critic did astutely rue, “the
significance of this grotesque film is likely to be obscured by its flimsy
title. It will take a change of title or heavy promotion to gain for this eerie
but well-done production the grosses it warrants.”This title change did, in fact, transpire.
In certain markets the title was changed to The Hands of Orlac in the hope of
increasing audience interest and box office revenue.With a production budget of just over
$217,000, domestic receipts of Mad Love
had totaled a disappointing $164,000.Some blamed the unrepresentative title of Mad Love for the film’s underwhelming performance.It
was believed that the audiences who routinely flocked to horror pictures passed
on Mad Love due to bad marketing.The title Mad
Love suggested the film was merely one-more dreary Hollywood romantic
drama.
London’s Picturegoer
thought the film a serviceable thriller, but little more.Acknowledging that Lorre’s performance
carried the production, the film otherwise “fails to grip to any great
extent.”Variety’s opinion was much the same.Suggesting Lorre’s role as the villainous Dr.
Gogol was an ideal one for the actor’s American film bow, “the results in
screen potency are disappointing.Being
a chiller, much will depend on exploitation.” The trade predicted Mad Love would “probably will do fair
biz on the whole.”
Subsequent reviews of Mad
Love were mostly positive, though some thought the grim subject matter too
sadistic and intense for the impressionable young and any patron with a weak
constitution.Lorre’s notices were uniformly
positive, one critic writing – likely to the actor’s chagrin – that he had managed
a spine-chilling performance both “menacing
and sinister.Karloff and Lugosi,
erstwhile nonpareil bogey-men of the movies, have a doughty rival.”Interestingly, Mad Love was released within weeks of Universal’s faux-Poe
thriller, The Raven featuring Messrs.
Karloff and Lugosi.Such release date synchronicity
might have hurt the box-office receipts of both films.There was, apparently, only so much sadism audiences
could sit through in the summer of 1935.
This Warner Bros. Archive Collectionregion-free issue of Mad Love is presented in 1080p High
Definition 16x9 with an aspect 1.37:1 and in DTS-HD Master mono audio. The transfer is excellent. As is often the case with these Warner
Archive Blu ray issues, there’s no abundance of special features offered
outside of the film’s trailer and a highly informative second-life commentary track courtesy of
Steve Haberman (screenwriter of Dracula:Dead and Loving It), ported over from the
six-film Hollywood Legends of Horror
Collection DVD box set of 2006.
Click here to order from the Cinema Retro Movie Store.
Steiner – Das Eiserne Kreuz, Teil 2 (aka:
Breakthrough/Sergeant Steiner); the German-British movie from 1979 brought
together Richard Burton, Robert Mitchum, Rod Steiger, Curd Jürgens and an uncredited
Christoph Waltz.
Following the immensely successful and
profitable School Girl Report movies, producer Wolf C. Hartwig could afford a
much bigger international production. Cross of Iron was based on a World War II
novel and of course directed by Sam Peckinpah. The music was set to be composed
by Peter Thomas. However, on meeting, the two did not get along (interview with
Peter Thomas in “Der Filmkomponist Peter Thomas” by Gerd Naumann, 2009 ibidem
Verlag). In the end, the American composer Ernest Gold scored the movie.
Despite several financial squabbles, the film became a great international
success in 1977.
A sequel was quickly set in motion. This time
directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, and with a score finally written by Peter
Thomas. The new director and the composer hit it off right away. The title
melody by Peter Thomas was released as a single by Ariola shortly after the
film premiere in 1979. The film Steiner – Das Eiserne Kreuz, Teil 2, however,
was unable to match the success of the original movie despite an impressive cast
and the reuniting of Burton and director McLaglen who had worked so well on The
Wild Geese (1978). A proposed soundtrack LP release of Thomas’s score was
therefore shelved due to the film’s poor reception.
Allscore Media’s new revised release marks
the vinyl premiere of the film music, supplemented by a previously unreleased
track that was not included on a long out-of-print CD release from 1993. Following
Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra – Bruce Lee: The Big Boss (CD/LP ASM 048, Allscore
2020) and Winnetou and Old Firehand (CD/LP ASM 049, Allscore 2021), this is the
third CD/LP release in a series dedicated to the legacy of composer Peter
Thomas.
Steiner-Das Eiserne Kreuz 2 is presented in a
very limited edition of 500 and comes in an orange translucent vinyl (LP
22228-1) with a super gatefold sleeve featuring brand new artwork by the
talented artist Adrian Keindorf. This release is also available in a digipack
CD release (CD 22228-2). The audio quality is remarkably clean and wide in its
delivery, suggesting that the masters have survived and been kept very well.
April Wright is a film director whose credits include the
documentaries Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the American
Drive-In Movie (2013), Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the
Movie Palace (2019) and Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story
(2020), all of which can be viewed JustWatch.com.
Like all of us cinephiles, Ms. Wright was not just a fan of movies but also a
lover of the experience of going to see a movie, especially at the
drive-in. Ms. Wright and I are similar in age and her enthusiasm for the
drive-in dates back to her childhood, a familial outing which became a much-anticipated
and frequent event during the summer months. I cannot make that claim,
unfortunately, as I have attended the drive-in only a handful of times in my
life.
Ms. Wright’s latest film, Back to the Drive-In (2023),
looks at a dozen remaining drive-ins across the United States and the owners
who are, quite honestly, struggling to keep them going. It’s a poignant look at
an American pastime that has slowly become an endangered species.
Todd Garbarini: I loved your film. I’ve been a movie
fan all my life and I love drive-ins, as well as big and beautiful movie
theaters. Clearly you share my enthusiasm.
April Wright: Yes, absolutely. I had a movie family
in a way. My dad had an 8mm camera and reel-to-reel editing equipment for that
in the basement. I did understand a little bit of the nuts and bolts of
filmmaking even when I was a kid. We watched lots of movies. There was a
neighborhood movie palace down the street from my house in Chicago that my
brother and sister ended up working at. I was able to see a lot of movies. I’ve
been interested in movie palaces, just because they were so big and ornate. Now
you watch movies at home or on your smartphone and that showmanship is changing
and I just don’t really understand why. I like making movies to remind people
about what a cool experience it can be seeing a movie as an event and an
experience.
TG: Do you remember the very first movie
you saw in either a drive-in or in a movie theater?
AW: I really don’t because it was just so
commonplace that we saw a lot of movies, so I don’t have any “first-experience”
memories. I kind of remember seeing Song of the South as a kid and I
remember Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I’m sure I saw some of
the Herbie the Love Bug films. Escape to Witch Mountain, I remember
seeing that one at a drive-in. I love horror films and I saw them, too. One
thing I remember vividly is when Carrie was on television, and my mom
telling me I couldn’t come in the room. Of course, I really wanted to, and I
snuck downstairs. I looked in right at the end where the hand comes out. It
scared me, but it made me really curious. When I was older and I saw the whole
movie, it’s one of my favorite films of all time. It intrigued me in a way,
just planted that seed since she made it even more forbidden, like, “You can’t
watch this!” (laughs)
TG: You’ve made a documentary about movie
palaces.
AW: Yes! One of the interviews in that
movie is shot at the Loew’s Jersey City. We shot that in 2017. That’s a
gorgeous theater. I love it. When that reopens, it’s going to be really great.
That theater’s interesting because at one point in time, they had split it into
three theaters during the multiplex era.
TG: What?! Are you serious? I had no idea…
AW: Yes, so on the main floor, they split
it right down the middle. You had half of the main screen on the left and the
other half on the right. They covered the balcony so that they had a third
screen up there and they took all that out, which is incredible that they were
able to remove all that partitioning. Right down the street is The Stanley
Theater which is now home to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. We got to go in there
during the Theater Historical Society
tours that we were on. That one is gorgeous, too. It’s an atmospheric
theater and they used to have a blue sky and twinkling lights on the ceiling in
most of them. Then it would look like a little town around you as if you were
outside. It’s impeccably maintained, it’s gorgeous, but they painted their
ceiling white, so it looks like you’re up in the heavens or up in the clouds
when you’re in there.
TG: I’m jealous because in my area, I had a
handful of movie theaters that I went to over the years, and now they’re all
gone. One of them was the Plainfield Edison Drive-In. They had a double feature
of Black Christmas and Psycho, TheVelvet Vampire, Lemora:
A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural, etc. It opened in 1957 and closed in
1984, the year before I obtained my driver’s license!
AW: I don’t know if you know this, but the
very first drive-in ever was in New Jersey.
TG: Yes, that was Camden. The founder was Richard
Hollingshead.
AW: Yes! His son is in my first documentary
talking about how his dad invented it. It opened in 1933, so this year is the 90th
anniversary of the drive-in, which is pretty cool.
TG: Hard to believe. In fact, what I liked
about your new film, Back to the Drive-In, is that you have the Delsea
Drive-In in Vineland, NJ, the only remaining drive-in in the state.
AW: Yes. I went down there. We shot more,
but they said, “Oh, we don’t want to be in it that much.” Some people like
being on camera and don’t.A lot of the drive-in owners are part of the
United Drive-In Theater Owners Association, there’s a group. They have an
annual conference in Florida. I went to it in February of 2020, which is right before
COVID. I knew I wanted to do a follow-up (to my previous film about drive-ins),
and at that point in time, I thought I wanted to just go really in depth with perhaps
three families. I said to them there, “Does anybody want to be part of this
film?” There were some other drive-ins that had wanted to be part of my next
film that weren’t in my first one, and so I had a few potential ones. Then a
month later, COVID hit, and even though drive-ins were open, I still felt like
states were changing the rules and everything was still weird for a little
while. I waited, but then the more that COVID was going on and then drive-ins
started getting all this attention, I thought that this is a layer to my story
that I never could have anticipated. It made me expand that instead of just
showing a few families in depth and what they do. I wanted to show not only
that, but what was COVID doing to it? It made me want to have a bigger cross-section.
I needed to see what was going on and go to some really old and some fairly new
drive-ins. I wanted to go to some big ones with seven screens, and I wanted to
go to the single screens out in different states. I tried to just pick every
type of factor to represent. The weird thing was, as soon as I got on the road
and went to a few of them, I realized they were all telling me the same story. They
were all struggling. Everybody was just trying to get through this period. They
were small businesses, family-owned, and they were just trying so hard to keep
them going because they really care about what it provides to their community.
That’s how it came about. I was going to do it anyway, but then the way I
decided to do it evolved because of COVID.
TG: What I find interesting is, in the
movie, they say, “We ask you to keep your mask on while you’re in the car.” We
forget how bad it really was back then during the height of COVID.
AW: Yes. I think that might have been a
California drive-in, too, because California was more rigid than other places.
California was definitely in a program wherein if the numbers were high, the
rules were stricter. If the numbers went down, then it got released. That might
have been at a moment when the numbers were high. I know because although I’m
from Chicago, I live in Los Angeles.
TG: I haven’t been to LA since 2008. I have
gone to more drive-ins as an adult while out on business than I ever did when I
was a child. It just kills me to see this type of thing dying out. I look at
the theaters that used to be around here on CinemaTreasures.org and there is no
evidence that these places ever existed.
AW: I know. When you see a horror movie at
a drive-in and you can look over to your right or left, and there’s a forest right
next to you, that’s an extra layer of film! That’s like 4-D!
TG: Who are some of your favorite directors?
AW: One of my favorites is Brian De Palma.
TG: Oh, I love him. I just saw the new Dressed
to Kill 4K Blu-ray and it’s beautiful.
AW: I really like pretty much all his
films, just theway he shoots them. I like the
split-screen stuff.I think they all hold up. He had great actors and
all of them and just, yes, I think he’s a great filmmaker. Like even the Mission
Impossible series, I still think the first one is the best one that he
directed.
TG: Do you like William Friedkin?
AW: I do. Actually, we’ve met and chatted before
because he’s also a fellow Chicagoan. I love TheFrench Connection.
That’s probably his best movie, my absolute favorite. I went to a screening of
that at the Academy where he was there doing Q&A and just some of the stuff
that he did because he came out of documentaries first. For him to do moving
shots the way he did and just the grittiness of it, I mean that was something
on the newer side when he shot something that way. Yes, I really love that.I love all John Carpenter’s
stuff, for sure. Richard Linklater. I love (Steven) Soderbergh’s work because
he’s just made such a wide array of movies, big movies but also small and experimental,
some that he shot on videos cameras. He tries different things. I really like
them as filmmakers as well. Amy Heckerling has such a great body of work and
Penelope Spheeris. She started in documentaries. I actually just went to see
her doc a few days ago, the first Decline of Western Civilization, about
punk and she was there for Q&A. I love Nicholas Cage, too. Thrillers and
horror are probably my number one. Of course, I do like documentaries as well,
especially if they’re about subjects that you can learn something about.The
Shining is one of my favorites of all time. Also, I love John Landis. I’m
from Chicago, and he shot some things there like TheBlues Brothers.
TG: How much footage did you shoot for Back
to the Drive-In?
AW: Quite a bit. I had a crew to help me in
Los Angeles when I was here, but the rest I actually did by myself. I had my
primary camera, I had my drone, and then I had a GoPro, which I did time-lapses
from empty daytime to evening. Between those three, it gave me enough to cut
together, but I usually got to each drive-in in the afternoons, you would start
maybe at three in the afternoon, capturing all their preparation, and then stay
until late, usually two in the morning. It was basically almost twelve hours of
footage for each one, because I would just get there and be shooting non-stop.
Then the logical way to put it together, I thought it might be by subject, but
once I looked at it, I realized, no, it’s got to be chronological. Just one big
arc of the afternoon, the prep, and then opening the doors, and then the snack
bar, and then getting the movie on screen, and then the breather once all that’s
done became the way to tell it.
TG: I miss the aura and aroma of the
theaters I went to as a child.
AW: Yes, it’s true. Movie theater smell.
When I go to old theaters, too, a lot of times you walk into them and your
reaction is, “Oh, there’s a good old movie theater smell.” Also in the projection
rooms, if they’re where they have all that old equipment, that’s a certain
smell because the film and the oil and all that had a smell, too. That’s almost
gone now because they had to convert them to clean rooms for the digital
projection. You must have a climate-controlled, very fancy environment for
those. A lot of the drive-ins still have both projectors.
TG: Do you have an all-time favorite movie?
AW: Rocky.
TG: Did you see it in the movies when it
first came out?
AW: I did. Even though I was a little kid,
my mom saw it and she wanted to take us to see Rocky. That’s probably
part of it. Also, I realized after I’ve been a filmmaker for a little while,
some of the things I like or I’m drawn to – and Carrie falls into this,
for sure – is that I really like underdogs and people who shouldn’t win but
somehow do. That’s a theme in the films that I like. For Rocky,
obviously, that is one of the best underdog stories. It’s not even the message
of winning. It’s just going the distance, of course. The story of making it is
an underdog story, too. The fact that Stallone can be a semi-nobody struggling
actor and come up with this and write it and create such an iconic character
that lives on is inspiring as well. I love that movie. It is my all-time
favorite. If you want to talk horror, my all-time favorite is Carrie.
TG: I was sorry to see your film end
because I just wanted to see so many other people talking. I’m sure you’ve
probably seen The Last Blockbuster,
the film about, literally, the last Blockbuster Video, which is in Bend,
Oregon. In some ways, your movie reminds me of that film because I say, yes,
there are no more video stores to go to. I want to thank you so much for taking
the time to speak with me.
AW: Thank you very much. I’m glad you
liked the movie!
Back to the Drive-In can
now be seen streaming on iTunes, Amazon Prime, Google Play, and Vudu.
Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980) is one of the
director’s best and most entertaining works. It also appears to be ahead of its
time in some ways while simultaneously paying homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), something Mr. De Palma
also did to great effect with his excellent 1973 Staten Island-lensed thriller Sisters, a film that Stephen King loved
so much that he championed Mr. De Palma to make his own novel Carrie into the 1976 film of the same
name. His 1976 romantic thriller Obsession
was also inspired by the Master of Suspense, specifically Vertigo (1958).
Filmed in the autumn of 1979 and
released on Friday, July 25, 1980, Dressed
to Kill pits Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson) as a woman who is bored and
sexually frustrated in the Big Apple as she looks to spice up her unexciting afternoons.
Her teenage son Peter (Keith Gordon, who would play Arnie in John Carpenter’s Christine in 1984
before becoming a film director) is a computer geek at a time when being a
computer geek meant being male and having zero sex appeal (he has built a
computer that carries binary numbers; he is also adept with booby traps and
other forms of technology). Kate is under the psychiatric care of Dr. Robert
Elliott (Michael Caine) for her frustrations and attempts to seduce him during
a session but is rebuffed.
An afternoon trip to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York results in the film’s most talked about
scene wherein she is “picked up” by a stranger who never says a word, and
playfully entices her in an extended and wordless “chase” in the museum which ends
with illicit sex in the backseat of a taxi and climaxes (no pun intended, of
course) with the quickest female orgasm in cinema history. Kate ends up
spending the evening with her mystery man in his swanky Front Street apartment,
only to discover surreptitiously that he has a venereal disease. This leads her
to rush off in haste and be unceremoniously dispatched by a razor-wielding nut
job in a carefully orchestrated elevator murder sequence that is intercut with
the introduction of Liz Blake, a call girl played by Nancy Allen, who witnesses
the murder.
Kate’s son is obviously shattered by
his mother’s death, although we only see his stepfather very briefly – at the
start of the film during a “wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am” sex scene with Kate,
through the shower as he shaves, and later after Kate’s murder when Peter is at
the police station. Detective Marino (played brilliantly by Dennis Franz) tries
his best to get what info he can out of Liz and Dr. Elliott, but Peter teams up
with Liz to find the killer themselves who appears to be a man dressed as a
woman, with long blonde hair and dark sunglasses.The obvious tip of the hat to Psycho, complete with Ms. Dickinson’s
death scene a third of the way through the film (making her a modern-day Janet
Leigh), should give a clue to the killer’s real identity.
There is a great deal of sexual
tension and graphic violence in Dressed
to Kill, so much so that when the film was released 43 years ago it was
initially given an X rating by the MPAA. Jack Valenti, who was president of the
MPAA at the time, had stated prior to the film’s release that the political
climate in the U.S. had been shifting to the right which in turn meant more
conservative attitudes toward sex and violence (those of us who lived through
the Meese Report days know this all too well). Interestingly Zombie (1979), the Italian Lucio Fulci gross-out film, was released
the same day as Mr. De Palma’s film, unrated and with a similar caveat that appeared on the poster of
George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead
two years earlier since newspapers would not run ads for X-rated films.So, violence was certainly still acceptable
on the big screen, as long as it was rated accordingly. Some of the dialogue in
the film was also sexual in nature and had to be altered, but the cuts that
were made for the theatrical version have all been reinstated on the latest
home video releases of the film. Currently, wherein XXX-rated hardcore pornography
is just a computer mouse-click away, just about anything in Dressed to Kill seems tame in
comparison.
Mr. De Palma has consistently
received critical flak for “ripping off” Alfred Hitchcock, but this time he
manages to create and sustain a visual style all his own. Even Vincent Canby
liked the film, which is saying a lot! Had Bernard Herrmann still been alive
(the great musical collaborator of Mr. Hitchcock), he no doubt would have been
commissioned to write the score, having already delivered two excellent scores
for Mr. De Palma’s Sisters (1973) and
Obsession (1976), the latter of which
is sumptuous and gorgeous, clearly one of his best. His successor proved to be
quite formidable. Pino Donnagio, who wrote brilliant music for Don’t Look Now (1973) and Tourist Trap (1979), delivers another
great piece here, and has gone on to work with Mr. De Palma on many other
films.
Dressed to Kill has been released in many formats
since its theatrical release. Warner Home Video released it on VHS in the big
clamshell box at least twice; Image Entertainment released a somewhat
letterboxed laserdisc; and MGM/UA released it on both DVD and Blu-ray in a
special edition, as did The Criterion Collection. Now, Kino Lorber has added
this title to their ever-expanding and impressive roster of classic titles. This new edition is loaded with new
and exclusive extras while porting over some from the aforementioned MGM/UA releases:
Disc
One is Dressed to Kill in 4K UHD. This is hands-down the best that the
film has ever looked. I recall purchasing the Image Entertainment letterboxed
laserdisc in 1990 and being very disappointed in the transfer. I would not have
guessed that I would have to wait 33 years to see this vast improvement.
Disc
Two is a standard Blu-ray that contains the following supplements:
Strictly Business runs 17:26 Nancy Allen talks about how the script came about and how an
executive saw Suzanne Somers in her role! I would have loved to have seen that,
with Mr. Roper (Norman Fell) as the killer.
Killer Frameswith
Fred Caruso runs 8:13 and is a look at the work of associate producer and
production manager Fred Caruso who worked on Midnight Cowboy (1969), Husbands
(1970), The Godfather (1972), and later on Blow Out (1981) and
several other films for Mr. DePalma.
An Imitation of Life with Keith Gordon runs 14:15 and is an engaging
discussion about how Mr. Gordon got cast in the film and played Angie
Dickinson’s son who was originally envisioned as a sexually unaware ten-year-old.
Mr. Gordon decided to play it as an older teenager who has been up all night,
tired, etc. and to his credit, Mr. DePalma agreed. He also discusses how he saw
them shooting the murder scene and it looking ridiculous, but the way that it
was edited made all the difference.
Symphony of Fear, 2012 Interview with Gordon Litto by Fiction Factory runs 17:36 and
the producer talks about how he saw Brian DePalma’s Sisters and began
his professional relationship with the director.
Dressed in White, 2012 Interview with Angie Dickinson by Fiction Factory runs 29:53 and is
an onscreen interview. Brian DePalma contacted her while she was promoting Claude
Pinoteau’s Jigsaw in Canada in 1979. She talks about Michael Caine’s
hilarious sense of humor; the celebrated museum sequence took four days to
shoot; the subtlety of Bobbi’s first appearance onscreen (something that I
missed over and over again); the difficulties of shooting the cab sequence; the
elevator set; and suggesting to Ann Roth the costume designer that she wear a
white coat.
Dressed in Purple, 2012 Interview with Nancy Allen by Fiction Factory runs 23:04. Ms.
Allen discusses starring in Carrie following her early onscreen cameo
opposite Jack Nicholson towards the end of Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail (1973);
the sensual movement of a camera being similar to a dance; working again with
Keith Gordon (they had previously collaborated on Brian DePalma’s Home
Movies the previous year); Ann Roth’s costuming on her; the editing of
Jerry Greenberg, the Oscar-winning cutter on William Friedkin’s The French
Connection (1971); the uncomfortable lingerie outfit; and auditioning for
Dario Argento’s Inferno in New York in 1979 and not wanting to shoot
underwater (that role went to Irene Miracle)
Lessons in Filmmaking,2012 Interview with Keith Gordon by Fiction Factory runs 30:46. Mr.
Gordon discusses his experiences on the film and how it was an excellent course
in film school with a master filmmaker. He watched the elevator murder sequence
being shot and thinking how silly it looked, only to be blown away by the way
it was cut together in the final film.
The Making of Dressed to Killruns 43:51 and is a 2001 documentary shot in standard definition which
includes recollections from the cast and crew.
SlashingDressed to Killruns 9:49 and is a 2001 look (shot
in standard definition) at the changes that needed to be made to the film in
1980 in order to secure an R-rating.
Unrated/R-Rated/TV-Rated Comparison from 2001 that is exactly what the
title implies.
An Appreciation by Keith Gordon runs 6:05 and is a 2001 featurette (shot in standard
definition) wherein Mr. Gordon talks about the impressions that Kate’s
character has as she is in the celebrated museum sequence and the subliminal
images in the film.
1980 Audio Interview with Michael Caine runs 4:50, and he
discusses how much he loves shooting in New York and his-then recent move to
California.
1980 Audio Interview
with Angie Dickinson runs 3:30 and she talks about how the film
should receive a double “R” rating because of its sexual content. Fun stuff!
1980 Audio Interview with Nancy Allen runs 14:30 and she
speaks at length of how much she prefers to work on smaller films with lower budgets
than big, budgeted films, such as Steven Spielberg’s 1941, as the crew
was too numerous in size for her to remember who worked on the film.
Dressed to Kill Radio Spots
Dressed to Kill TV Spots
Dressed to Kill Teaser Trailer and Theatrical Trailer
Trailers
for Play Misty for Me, And Soon the Darkness, Eyes of Laura
Mars, Happy Birthday to Me, and Not for Publication round out
the package.
On March 31, 1931 Variety
reported that Paramount had secured, for an undisclosed sum, the sound rights
to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from the estate
of Robert Louis Stevenson.Stevenson’s
classic short story of 1886, Strange Case
of Dr. Jekylland Mr. Hyde, had
already been filmed by Paramount as a well-regarded 1920 silent featuring John
Barrymore. But it was curious to some industry watchers why Paramount went to
the trouble to secure rights: the novella was, after all, already in U.S.
public domain status.
Though true, it soon became apparent why Paramount’s
legal team wisely chose a formal rights lockdown.One week following the studio’s announcement
– to feature actor Fredric March in the titular double-role – a British
filmmaker, I.E. Chadwick (described by Variety
as “an independent producer inactive three years”), announced he too was planning a sound version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.Chadwick’s competing version would not see
the light of day.On June 23, the trades
reported his production had been summarily derailed by Paramount’s buying out all
British rights to the story.
Though Fredric March was touted as Paramount’s new Dr.
Jekyll as early as April 1931, a challenger would soon surface.On May 12, Variety picked up on a syndicated Hollywood gossip report that Paramount
was interested in having John Barrymore reprise the role.Though a Barrymore reconsideration seemed an
unlikely prospect, on May 5, Louela O. Parsons of the Motion Picture Editor
Universal Services teased that Paramount was looking to woo Barrymore from Warner
Bros. for their new “talkie” version of Hyde.
It’s altogether possible that Parsons, an old friend of
Barrymore’s, was sending out a trial balloon on the actor’s behalf.Barrymore’s contract with Warner Bros. had in
fact not been renewed following completion of Michael Curtiz’s The Mad Genius in May of 1931.The high- salaried and hard drinking actor
was now casting about for new work and a new contract.Warner Bros. was already expressing
unhappiness with the dwindling box office appeal of the former matinee
idol.In the final tally, Barrymore’s last
two pictures for Warner’s, The Mad Genius
and its predecessor Svengali (1931),
had combined for revenue losses totaling a reported half-million dollars.Following his ousting, Variety was kinder in their assessment of the actor’s continuing public
appeal, reporting only that, “Sales reports on Barrymore have been mild.”
There had to be a measure of professional disappointment
on Barrymore’s part.While Fredric March’s
star was in the ascendant, his own was dimming.March, an equally handsome and talented actor, had even played a
thinly-disguised character based on Barrymore in both the stage and film
versions of The Royal Family of Broadway.
Barrymore was good-naturedly impressed by March’s gift of impersonation and
mimicry.Following his attendance at a
stage performance of The Royal Family of
Broadway, Barrymore conceded March’s performance had captured, “my
mannerisms, exaggerated but true to life.”
But by May’s end it was clear that Barrymore would not be
returning to the Jekyll/Hyde role.Gossiper
Parson sourly rued that while, “never has any actor had more matinee fans
flocking to his side than our John, […] the flapper age yearns for Fredric
March and Paramount knows it.”In fact,
“flapper” appeal aside, March wasn’t the first pick of Paramount co-founder Adolph
Zukor or of West coast studio boss B.P. Schulberg.Paramount’s front-office had initially considered
either Barrymore or contract actor Irving Pichel considered for the role.But director Rouben Mamoulian insisted that
while the naturally sinister-looking Pichel might have made a suitable Mr.
Hyde, he simply couldn’t convincingly pull off the handsome, pheromone-inducing
romantic that was Dr. Jekyll.
It was a bold if immovable position for Mamoulian to
take.The director had only recently
signed with Paramount, delivering two Pre-Code pictures of modest success: Applause (1929) and City Streets (1931).He had also
boldly demanded – and was granted - a stipulation in his contract that he be
given extended leave-of-absences from Paramount so he could continue working on
Broadway back in his beloved New York City.Stagecraft aside, Mamoulian did possess an eye for filmmaking.Upon the news that Mamoulian was to direct Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the editors of Film Weekly cheered, calling him, “a
wizard with the camera.”They promised
the Mamoulian Dr. Jekyll, “promises
to outdo even the weirdness of the celebrated “Dr. Caligari.”
March was to return to Hollywood from Astoria, Queens,
New York, to begin production of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde directly following work on George Abbott’s Morals and Marriage (later re-titled as My Sin).Production on Jekyll was originally
slated to commence on August 3, though delays seemingly caused a schedule push-back
to September 1935.
In August it was announced one of March’s doomed victims,
Ivy Pierson, was to be played by the fetching blond ingénue Miriam Hopkins,
just off her assignment playing opposite Maurice Chevalier in Ernst Lubitsch’s The Smiling Lieutenant. By late summer
nearly all of the film’s principal and auxiliary players had been cast: Rose
Hobart, Edgar Norton, and Halliwell Hobbes among them.This was to be a production of major
scope.There were reports that Paramount
was planning the hire of some six hundred screen extras, with as many as
eighty-one to be given speaking parts.Both of those estimates were certainly possible: the film features large
crowds attending both prim society dinner parties and déclassé backstreet
London music halls.
To successfully mount such an unwieldy production,
director Mamoulian desperately wanted a trusted assistant, in this case Robert
Lee, to help him out.Though the trades
reported Lee had only recently been given “full director” status at Paramount, the
budding helmsman agreed to put off this promotion – an opportunity which was,
sadly, not offered again.Mamoulian’s
direction was – as always - nothing if not inventive, with Karl Strauss’s acrobatic
camera roaming restlessly through POV tracking shoots, half-screen swipes and
the sorts of extreme close-ups later found in Sergio Leone films.
Though some film historians and fans believe – not
unreasonably – that John S. Robertson’s silent version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was the more groundbreaking effort, few
would argue that Mamoulian’s was the finest of the several sound versions that
would follow.Though the various film
adaptations were not always true to Stevenson’s original storyline, they were
far more cinematic in presentation.Following
in the wake of Universal’s horrific caricatures of Dracula and Frankenstein,
Paramount chose to eschew the original tale’s Jekyll’s split-psychologic
dichotomies and instead highlight Mr. Hyde’s physical appearance as a hideous, feral
beast.Mamoulian’s film was also
envelope-pushing in its Pre-Code depictions of implied - and sometimes more-
than-implied – scenes of on-screen debauchery and salacious sexuality.
The iconic make-up conjured by Wally Westmore for March’s
Hyde was certainly top-notch, as great as anything Jack Pierce had conjured for
Universal.Newspaper accounts contemporary
to the film’s production suggested March withstood nearly two-hundred hours in both
Westmore’s make-up chair and on set for the filming of the “eight” mind-blowing
transformation sequences expertly rigged by Mamaoulian and Struss. (If eight
transformations were photographed as reported, only six would make pass the
film’s final cut, the final one a mostly unconvincing time-lapse).
It was later revealed by Strauss that the justifiably
famous transformation sequences near the film’s beginnings had been created by a
novel use of panchromatic film stock and a blend of colored filters.Strauss was certainly the man for this
particular photographic effect.The
cinematographer had had already earned a well-deserved Academy Award for his photographic
work on F.W. Murnau’s German Expressionism masterpiece Sunrise (1927). Upon completion of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’s fifty-one shooting days, Mamoulian celebrated
in style, throwing a huge party for the film’s cast and crew members at
Hollywood’s swanky Russian-American club.
Mamoulian’s Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was released during Christmas week of 1931.It was off to a good start, though
Universal’s Frankenstein (released
November 21, 1931) was still holding strong at cinema box-offices.Paramount brass continued to hold their
collective breaths through mid-January to see if Jekyll might have the same staying power.The film proved that it had, ultimately
bringing in earnings that made it one of studio’s highest grossing successes of
1932.One casualty of the runaway
box-office successes of Frankenstein
and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was, sadly
and ironically, Barrymore’s The Mad
Genius, released only a couple of weeks previous to the former.It’s interesting to note that both Frankenstein and The Mad Genius featured a struggling, middle-aged actor who would
receive absolutely no screen credit for the latter and only back-end credits of
the former – Boris Karloff.
Though Paramount would never become the fright-factory
that Universal was in the 1930s and 1940s, the studio would follow Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with a few genre
classics and semi-classics of their own:Island of Lost Souls (1932), Murders in the Zoo (1934) and The Monster and the Girl (1941).No subsequent Paramount horror other than Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde would earn the
prestige of the Academy however.The
film would earn no fewer than three Oscar nominations at the 1932 ceremony
(Best Actor, Best Cinematography and Best Adaptive Writing).But only March would walk off with the
coveted trophy in the first category.
This Warner Bros. Archive Collection issue of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is presented in
1080p High Definition 16x9 with an aspect 1.19:1 and in DTS-HD Master 2.0 mono
audio.The film looks brilliant; if
there was a single visual on-screen blemish, it escaped my notice.Ported over from the film’s digital DVD issue
of 2004 is a commentary by Author/Film Historian Greg Mank and the Friz
Freleng/Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes cartoon
short Hyde and Hare (1955).New to this Region-free Blu-ray set is a second impressive commentary featuring
screenwriter Steve Haberman and filmmaker Constantine Nasr.A very
special feature included is a Theatre Guild of America radio play of the tale,
first broadcast on November 19, 1950. This
radio show is of particular interest since it finds Fredric March reprising his
role as Jekyll/Hyde nearly twenty-years on, with Barbara Bel Geddes and Hugh
Williams assisting in the principal supporting roles.Essential.
Click here to order from the Cinema Retro Movie Store
We
are all faced with challenging situations in our lives, but one would hope that
we face nothing like the scenario that Thomas Babington “Babe” Levy (Dustin
Hoffman) does in John Schlesinger’s Marathon Man, the film version of
William Goldman’s novel of the same name and who was the film’s screenwriter.
The movie opened in New York on Wednesday, October 6, 1976. Babe is a Ph.D.
candidate selected to be in an exclusive class of five students at Columbia
University taught by a professor (Fritz Weaver in a terrific cameo) who knows that
Babe’s father committed suicide following his being investigated during the Joseph
McCarthy-era witch hunts. He urges Babe not to turn his research into a
personal crusade to clear his father’s name, something that Babe is wrestling
with.
Babe
is an avid runner and times himself daily while running through Central Park,
presumably to compete in the New York City Marathon. He is verbally ribbed by
the guys who live across the street from his apartment. His brother, Henry
“Doc” Levy (the excellent Roy Scheider), passes himself off to Babe as an oil
company executive, but in reality is a diamond courier for an infamous Nazi war
criminal named Dr. Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier, who was nominated as Best
Supporting Actor), who has been hiding in South America while living off of
diamonds he stole from Jews during the Nazi occupation in Europe. Szell shares
a safe deposit box with his brother who lives in New York, however the latter
dies in an accident involving an oil truck. This complicates matters for Szell as
he must come out of hiding to get his diamonds, running the risk of being
recognized by Auschwitz survivors.
Babe
meets and falls for a research student named Olga (Marthe Keller), who is
fluent in German and French and they begin a romance which takes Babe deeper
into the mystery of his brother’s affiliation with Szell. The overall film may
not make one hundred percent sense, and there are plot holes large enough to
drive an oil truck through, however it is terrifically entertaining and so far
ahead of contemporary thrillers that I suggest one overlook these flaws. For a
basis of comparison, its most obvious cinematic antecedent in terms of
atmosphere is Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View (1974) with Warren
Beatty. William Devane also is terrific as Janeway, Doc’s friend who comes to
the rescue and needs to get pertinent information from Babe.
Marathon
Man was the first Dustin Hoffman film that
I saw when it aired on CBS in October 1980 and for a while Szell’s ominous
inquiry to Babe when he is captured by Szell’s henchmen (Richard Bright and
Marc Lawrence), the infamous “Is it safe?”, became part of the lexicon and a
cultural reference that even appeared in Joe Dante’s Gremlins (1984) when
one of the titular creatures jokingly brandishes a dental drill. The film requires
active viewing for first-timers as there are double-crosses in abundance and if
you blink you might miss them. Viewers may dig deeply with questions about the
plot, but my only concern is where did Szell obtain that nifty killer wrist knife
that he uses on Roy Scheider and Fred Stuthman (the survivor who recognizes him
at the end of the film)? That is a nice device that can come in handy (sorry)
during ponderous corporate meetings and heated disagreements with political
adversaries.
Marathon
Man has been released before on video
cassette, laserdisc, CED (remember those?!), DVD, Blu-ray, and is now available
in a two-disc set from Kino Lorber, which keeps releasing great movies in
equally great special editions.
(Photo: Paramount)
Disc
One contains the film in 4K UHD, scanned in 4K from the original 35mm camera
negative. I personally cannot see a noticeable difference between this and the
standard Blu-ray on my 4K television, though it might be on a much larger
screen. There are no extras on this disc.
Disc
Two is a standard Blu-ray derived from the same 4K scan and down-converted to
standard HD, and the disc has extras ported over from the original DVD release,
with some exclusive extras this time around to add additional value. For the
first time in any format, there is an audio commentary by film historians Steve
Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson and it is feature-length. It is a joy to listen
to and I am grateful that they took time to discuss the great contribution of
composer Michael Small’s score for the film. A veteran of terrific film music
for Klute (1971), The Parallax View (1974), Night Moves
(1975), and an unused score to The China Syndrome (1979), his score for Marathon
Man is characteristically icy, creepy and sinister. There is also a good
deal of info regarding the cast and crew, particularly screenwriter Goldman and
director Schlesinger. They also quite correctly point out that the original
movie poster add campaign, which strangely consisted of simply the words, “A
thriller,” would have benefitted greatly with “Is it safe?” instead.
The
Magic of Hollywood…Is the Magic of People runs 21:14 and is a wonderful behind-the-scenes look at the
making of the film while it was in production, ported over from the 2001 DVD.
Much of the footage is of Robert Evans talking about catching lightning in a
bottle and getting his first casting choices to come along for the ride. Input
from Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, John Schlesinger and Marthe Keller
bookend footage of the final confrontation between Babe and Szell on a Los
Angeles backlot set!
Going
the Distance: Remembering Marathon Man
runs 29:07 and is a 2001 piece from the DVD of the time and contains interviews
with the cast and crew.
Rehearsal
Footage runs 21:06 and is
my favorite extra which includes Dustin Hoffman’s, Roy Scheider’s, and Marte
Keller’s explorations of their characters. This is very interesting as much of
it was shot before and during the release of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws,
the blockbuster that Mr. Scheider starred in, before principal photography
commenced in October 1975 and finished around February 1976. Marathon Man
also has the unique distinction of being the second motion picture to employ
the use of the then-new Steadicam.
Rounding
out the extras are the theatrical trailer, ten TV Spots and two radio spots.
“Instrumentalisation” (2023)(Cine 28) was
released on vinyl on February 24th together with a CD edition that includes last
year’s release, “Manipulation” (2022)(Cine 27) in a different mix and order.
There is also a 2-vinyl/CD set offered together with “Manipulation”. “Instrumentalisation”
is the long awaited and eagerly anticipated sister album to LAWA’s “Manipulation”.
I should point out at this stage, and for
review purposes, that I am listening to the vinyl LP version of this release.
The LP plays continuously (in a concept style) and without breaks, which
sometimes proves hard to determine where some pieces begin and end. “Instrumentalisation”
opens with the brooding ‘Plugout’, a nice synth-based rhythm played over a deep
throbbing bass riff. It sets up the album well, and wouldn’t sound out of place
in any number of 80s sci-fi flicks made by John Carpenter or David Cronenberg. Pulsating rhythms and industrial themes form
the basis of side A, the 8 pieces vary in their range. ‘Complot’, for instance,
features some delicate, childlike backing vocals that really add a haunting
charm to the track. Additional tracks such as ‘RND’ and in particular, ‘Guns’
ramp up the apocalyptic synths and drum beats and provide a real sense of dread
and tense, edgy atmosphere. Side A closes with the delightful ‘Soft Girl’, a
dreamy little segment which unfortunately is also the shortest track of the
side. Nevertheless, it does set you up nicely for the flipside – or perhaps is
simply designed to lead you into a false sense of safety and security? LAWA
always maintain a dark, wicked sense of humour and a genuine knack of messing
with your soul on an emotional level.
Side B does continue in a much similar vein,
perhaps a little more restrictive in its themes and doesn’t quite branch out,
(as far as exploring new directions) as side A. That said, there is still a
whole lot to enjoy. Diverse influences here range from the film works of Goblin
to Tangerine Dream. Tracks such as ‘Vault’ and ‘So soft’ are all good, solid
examples of filmic synth-pop of the past. I have a lot of love for “Instrumentalisation”,
but I also believe LAWA can spread their wings to a wider degree. Over the
course of these two albums, it’s proven that the duo can do the dramatic and
the ‘industrial’ – but I wouldn’t want it to turn into a self-restrictive style
or limited in terms of exploring new areas. I feel that LAWA could quite easily
remove the restraining belts and venture out into even richer (and dare I say
it) softer territories? They have certainly touched upon it, perhaps a little
too tentatively in this album, but I feel it’s there, just waiting for the
opportunity to breakthrough. Retro synth
film music can also have a softer under belly. I immediately think of Maurice
Jarre’s “Witness” (1985) or “Blade Runner” (1982) by Vangelis – all of which
proved to have a heart with genuine warmth, as well as a rhythmic pounding beat.
Cineploit’s packaging is again beautiful,
with a nicely conceived post-modern design. The vinyl is pressed in a striking
white/blue and blue/white combo mix to each side. Audio quality is deep, wide
and fully rounded and has been mastered very nicely by Alain Leonard.
Cinema Retro has received the following press release relating to the UK release of "Frankenstein: The True Story":
Presented
for the first time in high definition and featuring some incredible bonus
material and stunning new artwork by Graham Humphreys, Frankenstein: The True
Story is one of the most acclaimed versions of Mary Shelley's masterpiece.
The
film features an all-star cast led by James Mason, Leonard Whiting, David
McCallum, Jane Seymour, Michael Sarrazin, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson and Tom
Baker.
Frankenstein:
The True Story (1973) inspired author Anne Rice to write Interview with the
Vampire, the movie of which starred Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise.
Having
finished The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola and John Boorman, having wrapped
up Deliverance were both keen to direct Frankenstein: The True Story as a
theatrical release but it was decided to keep it as a made-for-television movie
directed by Jack Smight.
Writers
Christopher Isherwood (Forever and a Day, The Great Sinner, A Single Man, and
author of Goodbye to Berlin, the novel on which the musical Cabaret was based)
and Don Bachardy (Isherwood’s longtime lover and chief creative consultant)
weren’t happy that Smight played down the homo-eroticism they’d written in to
the screenplay and so published it separately.
Leonard
Whiting, who stars as Victor Frankenstein, is currently in the process of suing
Paramount Studios for ‘forcing them into a nude scene’ in Franco Zeffirelli’s
1968 adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. Zeffirelli chose Whiting for the part of
Romeo because he had “a magnificent face, gentle melancholy, sweet, the kind of
idealistic young man Romeo ought to be." The role of Frankenstein saw
Whiting growing increasingly hideous as the film progresses. The make-up was by
Hammer horror veteran artist Roy Ashton.
Synopsis:
In 19th Century England, Dr Victor Frankenstein, bitter over his brother's
death, voices his wish that men could have power over life and death. Following
a chance encounter with Dr Henry Clerval, a surgeon experimenting in this very
field, they begin to work together. Victor achieves the impossible, the
creation of life, but with it comes unforeseen and unimaginable terror.
Cast:
James Mason, Leonard Whiting, David McCallum, Jane Seymour, Michael Sarrazin,
John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Tom Baker, Nicola Pagett, Michael Wilding,
Clarissa Kaye, Agnes Moorhead and Margaret Leighton.
Extras:
Film Introduction from James Mason; Off with Her Head - An Interview with Jane
Seymour; Victor's Story- An Interview with Actor Leonard Whiting;
Frankenstein's Diary- A Conversation with Writer Don Bachardy; A Double-Sided
Fold Out Poster of the All New Graham Humphreys Artwork; Audio commentary with
Filmmaker/Film Historian Sam Irvin.
(This Blu-ray is a Region-2 release.)
Click here to order from Amazon UK (The Blu-ray will be released on 27 March)
Even
diehard fans of filmmaker David Lynch were puzzled by his 2006 epic surrealist
horror picture, INLAND EMPIRE. There are legions of fans and critics who
love the movie, but there are likely more who find it impenetrable, way too
long, self-indulgent, pretentious, and, as one critic called it, a film that
might have been made by a “former genius who now has Alzheimer’s.”
INLAND
EMPIRE is
tough viewing. It deals with what could be called “multi-verses” before that
term was trendy. Some consider it to be the third film in a loosely
interconnected trilogy of movies Lynch made about “psychogenic fugues,” or dissociative
disorders. Lost Highway (1997) and Mulholland Drive (2001) both
deal with similar themes in which protagonists become “somebody else” during
the course of the stories.
One
aspect of the film that everyone agrees on is the stellar, virtuoso performance
by Laura Dern. Lynch famously sat on Hollywood Boulevard with a live cow in an attempt
to campaign for Dern’s performance to be considered for an Academy Award (she
wasn’t nominated). Ironically, even Dern has admitted she has no clue what is
going on in INLAND EMPIRE.
The
best this reviewer can make of the story is that Dern plays Hollywood actress
Nikki Grace, who is married to a Polish man, Piotrek (Peter J. Lucas), who has
something to hide. Nikki has just been cast in a movie called On High in
Blue Tomorrows, to be directed by the great Kingsley Stewart (Jeremy Irons)
and co-starring heartthrob Devon Berk (Justin Theroux). We learn that the movie
is based on an unfinished German movie from decades ago that was allegedly
“cursed” because the lead actors were murdered. Nikki, who has begun an affair
with Devon, sets out to investigate this history and literally falls through a
series of rabbit holes (there are even sequences featuring the anthropomorphic rabbits
from Lynch’s online shorts series, “Rabbits”) and becomes Sue Blue, who may or
may not be a completely different character from Nikki or perhaps a separate
personality. And then there’s the “Lost Girl” (Karolina Gruszka), a
human-trafficked prostitute in Poland in another decade (the 1930s?) whose
actions mirror what’s going on in Sue’s world.
Is
it a story of reincarnation? Of death and what might be the afterlife? Or maybe
there isn’t a story at all that can be followed linearly. Perhaps Lynch
intended INLAND EMPIRE to be an experience of emotions, images, and
surrealism in the vein of classic experimental filmmakers such as Stan
Brakhage, Germaine Dulac, Man Ray, and the Luis Buñuel
& Salvador Dalí collaborations. Maybe the movie is the
attempt to film in dream logic—which often makes no sense but can be vividly visceral.
At
any rate, INLAND EMPIRE is not for a mainstream audience. This is Lynch
at his most Lynchian. Be forewarned. Interestingly, it is the last theatrical
feature the filmmaker has made to date.
The
Criterion Collection has issued a new HD digital master on Blu-ray, made from
the 4K restoration supervised by Lynch, with both a 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master
Audio and uncompressed stereo soundtrack (also remastered by Lynch and original
recording mixers Dean Hurley and Ron Eng). As is usually the case with Lynch’s
films, the sound is always impressive, and INLAND EMPIRE doesn’t disappoint
in that regard.
The
package contains two disks—one with the feature film (it’s 180 minutes in
length), and the other with hours of supplements. Some of the supplements are
ported over from the original 2007 Rhino-Studio Canal DVD release: “More Things
That Happened” (75 minutes of extra scenes); LYNCH (a 2007 nearly-90-minute
behind-the-scenes documentary made by blackANDwhite); and “Ballerina,” a 2007
short film by Lynch. New to the Criterion release is an excellent half-hour
conversation between Laura Dern and actor Kyle MacLachlan, who both discuss
their respective work with Lynch and specifically Dern’s role in INLAND
EMPIRE; LYNCH2, a shorter documentary made by blackANDwhite; an
audio excerpt read by Lynch from his autobiography, Room to Dream
(co-written with Kristine McKenna); and the theatrical trailer. The booklet
contains an interview excerpt from Richard A. Barney’s book David Lynch:
Interviews.
Love
it or hate it, INLAND EMPIRE is without question one of the most
challenging and provocative pieces of cinema released since the New Millennium.
Click here to pre-order from Amazon. (The Blu-ray will be released on March 21.)
Ricou
Browning, a multi-talented filmmaker best known for playing TheCreature
from the Black Lagoon (in the underwater sequences) passed away at his
Florida home on February 27 at age
93.A Florida native and lifelong
swimmer, in 1953 Ricou was selected to accompany the location scouts from
Universal Studios, then planning their next monster epic about a prehistoric creature
rising from a remote Amazonian lake. This film, unlike many of their other
monster films, had extensive location photography, much of it underwater in
Wakulla Springs and Silver Springs, Florida.The 6’3” Browning’s grace and ease underwater so impressed studio
executives, that he was offered the title role for the water scenes. (The
Creature on land was played by actor Ben Chapman.)The film became a much-loved hit and spawned
two sequels – with Ricou reprising his role in 1955’s Revenge of the Creature
and 1956’s The Creature Walks Among Us.He got the idea for a show about kids and dolphins after raising some
dolphins himself and the movie Flipper was born (co-written with his
brother-in-law Jack Cowden).He went on
to direct and write numerous episodes of the TV series that followed.Another career highlight was when Ricou was
selected to choreograph the iconic underwater battle in Thunderball,
marshalling dozens of divers from the Florida diving community.He rehearsed their moves above water on a
barge, then recreated them for the cameras below the surface. Ricou returned to
Bondage to coordinate the underwater scenes for Sean Connery’s 1983 film, Never
Say Never Again and arranged the famous “Caddy Day” pool sequence in Caddyshack
(shot in Davie, Florida).
All
in all, Browning’s epic career spanned some five decades and over 50 films and
TV projects.And to think, it all
started with a swim in a lagoon!
Ricou
is survived by his four children including underwater coordinator, actor and
director Ricou Browning, Jr. ,10 children and 11 great-grandchildren. RIP, Ricou and thank you.
Attack
of the 50ft. Woman is by no measure the finest science-fiction
film to emerge from 1950’s Hollywood.It
may, however, be one of the most iconic.I suspect the film’s notoriety is partly due to Reynold Brown’s eye-catching
one-sheet poster design:a grimacing,
gargantuan deep-cleavaged Allison Hayes hovering over a city highway picking
off random automobiles.That nothing
like this actually happens in the
movie is mostly forgivable.If we were
to judge any film by its true delivery-of-on-screen mayhem against the false promises
of its imaginative publicity campaign, a lot of press agents would be serving
time.
Having said that, Brown’s artwork is an inseparable
component of the film’s status among fans of Silver Age sci-fi.The poster design has been both parodied and mimicked,
plastered on coffee mugs, jewelry, wristwatches, puzzles, t-shirts, model kits,
fridge magnets and book covers.Reynold’s
empowering image has even seen adoption as a feminist-rallying call-to-arms.Which is a pretty amazing feat for a film
dashed off in little more than a week’s time, with less than stellar optical
effects and at a budget of some $88,000.
Attack
of the 50ft. Woman was directed by Nathan Juran who is credited
on this particular film - for no reason I could source or conjure - as “Nathan
Hertz.”It’s not as if Juran was a fallen
helmsman of high-budget studio “prestige” pictures.He wasn’t a director reflexively protective
of a former glory, someone defensive that his once glittering career had
somehow descended into directing 50s sci-fi fodder.Juran’s first directorial assignment was, in
fact, for Universal’s The Black Castle
(1953) a mostly glossed-over gothic B-film featuring Richard Greene and Boris
Karloff.From 1953 on, Juran
subsequently bounced between directing low-budget feature films and studiously working
on early television.
But by 1957 Juran had become semi-typecast as a
successful auteur of low-budget sci-fi films, his streak beginning with 1957’s The Deadly Mantis.Over the course of the next several years
(1957-1964), Juran directed a number of features and television episodes, many
of which could be categorized as falling under the umbrella of sci-fi and
fantasy.These would include such offerings
as 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), The Brain from Planet Arous (1957) and,
perhaps most famously, The 7th Voyage of
Sinbad (1958).
The screenwriter of Attack
of the 50ft. Woman was Mark Hanna. Hanna had already displayed a modicum of
insight in his crafting of bigger-than-life-size monster movies.The writer had collaborated the previous year
with producer/director Bert I. Gordon on A.I.P.’s The Amazing Colossal Man. There’s
little arguing that Allied Artist’s decision to back Attack of the 50ft. Woman was simply an opportunity to coat-tail
Gordon’s recent string of successful “giant monster” pics.There had been plenty of them, some having
already seen issue, others in the can being rush-readied for release:King
Dinosaur (1955), Beginning of the End
(1957), The Cyclops (1957), The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), Attack of the Puppet People (1958), War of the Colossal Beast (1958) and The Spider (1958).
Jacques R. Marquette and Bernard Woolner’s production of Attack of the 50 ft. Woman would start on
Wednesday, January 8, 1958, under the working title of The Astounding Giant Woman.It wasn’t a great title, but Allied Artist’s had been bandied a pair of
alternates, both of which were also subsequently rejected: The Mammoth Female Monster and The
Colossal Female Monster.The film
was still being touted in the trades as The
Astounding Giant Woman through March of 1958.In April of 1958 the film was finally and
permanently re-titled Attack of the 50ft.
Woman.
Actress Yvette Vickers, who plays sultry sex-kitten Honey
Parker in the film, recalls the entire picture was shot in eight days, with no
one under the illusion they were making cinematic history. Allied Artists were
interested in quick returns on their investments.By January’s end of 1958, no fewer than ten
of their projects were reported as being “in various stages of editing,”
including Attack of the 50ft. Woman
and Howard W. Koch’s Frankenstein 1970.It was also during the last week of January
that Ronald Stein was brought onboard to compose the film’s engaging and jazzy soundtrack.
One intriguing aspect of Attack of the 50ft. Woman is that the film’s sci-fi elements would often
play second fiddle to the script’s domestic drama.Allison Hays plays Nancy Archer, a wealthy
but alcoholic socialite whose marriage is in shambles.The cruel ways of her unfaithful and
conniving husband, Harry (William Hudson) has already driven her to a
sanatorium.While his wife is away
(unsuccessfully) convalescing from her binge-drinking and mental frailties,
Harry has taken up with the “red-headed wench” Honey Parker (Vickers).Harry and Honey spend an inordinate amount of
time at Tony’s Bar and Grill, drinking, listening to jazz, dancing, and
plotting a comfortable future together - a future to be financed by Nancy’ loss
of stewardship of the family fortune due to her faltering mental health
capacities.
This scenario on paper, of course, appears very film-noir
in construction.But Hanna’s script
upends the film’s love triangle aspect almost from the very beginning.There have been worldwide news broadcasts describing
a “strange red fireball in the sky” hurtling towards earth.Driving back on Route 66 to her tony home
upon release from the sanatorium, Nancy unluckily encounters an alien craft somewhere
in a remote section of the Californian desert. No saucer-shaped spacecraft, this particular vehicle
arrives as a 30-foot high sphere resembling a weather balloon.As if suffering from “mental exhaustion and
alcoholism” was not enough, Nancy now finds herself in the clutches of giant
hand with hairy knuckles.
Unfortunately, this alien contact has left Nancy with
blue-green traces of radiation on her throat which brings about the onset of
“giantism.”Though doctors are summoned
to try to figure out why the poor and delirious Nancy is increasing in size at
an alarming rate, husband Harry and mistress Honey care not one whit, still duplicitously
scheming at Tony’s bar and grill.But
the two of them – as well as the local sheriff and police department – will soon
find themselves no match for a lady scorned: a wrathful woman who now stands 5o
ft. tall, is wrapped in an over-sized white bed sheet and appears angry as
Hell.
The earliest press screenings for Attack of the 50ft. Woman were held in Los Angeles on May 8, 1958.The film was screened with Roger Corman’s War of the Satellites, a second sci-fi feature
that was to be paired with Woman on national
release.In the view of the Variety critic, both genre offerings
were “on weak side.” The trade cited Mark
Hanna’s “corny dialogue” and Hertz’s “routine” direction on Woman as the film’s primary deficiencies,
dismissing the film as “a minor offering for the scifi trade where demands
aren’t too great.”
Well, maybe I’ve simply just sat through too many Silver
Age sci-fi films to be objective, but I didn’t find Hanna’s script necessarily
corny – but I did find the screenplay absent of likable characters worth caring
about. Although I am a fan of Attack of the 50ft. Woman, I can
understand the sulking review given the film upon release by critic Margaret
Harford of the Los Angeles Mirror: “Attack of the 50ft. Woman has so few
idealists on hand that the survival rate is lamentably low.”She goes on to describe the three romantic-triangle
leads as “unregenerative types” possessing souls not worthy of salvation.The unrelenting unwholesomeness of the aforementioned
trio ultimately inspires, “a wholesale blood bath that amounts to an extra
dividend for scare-traders on the horror market.”
While Attack of the
50ft. Woman would not be the last sci-fi/horror flick in which Hayes would
be cast, the actress happily moved over to dramatic work on television.She was enjoying the variety of roles such
new castings offered. It wasn’t surprising.Shortly following the release of Attack
of the 50ft. Woman, one journalist met with Hayes for a brief
interview.The gossip writer thought
Hayes “a fugitive from ‘Monster’ pictures,” a talented actress looking to take
an extended break from such desultory features. The actress had, in fact, racked up a score of
horror credits in recent years, appearing in a quartet of exploitation pictures
in 1957 alone: The Undead, The Zombies of Mora Tau, The Unearthly, and The Disembodied.In 1958
this former 50 ft. giant was looking for roles more befitting a woman of her
stature.
Shortly following her work on Woman, the saucy Yvette Vickers was cast in the feature The Saga of Hemp Brown and an episode of
TV’s Dragnet.In the years 1958-1961 most of Vickers’
casting was on various television dramas, though a few feature film roles were
mixed in as well.She would also, more
infamously, appear as a “bottoms up” “Playmate of the Month” centerfold in the
July 1959 issue of Playboy magazine,
the photo spread courtesy of Russ Meyer.Of course, I’m just noting the above for the historical record, not to suggest
anyone should rush off to eBay to source a back copy.But if you’re looking to add something new to
your collection…
This region-free Warner Bros. Archive Collection issue of
Attack of the 50ft. Woman is
presented in 1080p High Definition 16x9 with an aspect 1.85:1 and in DTS-HD
Master mono audio. As is often the case
with these Warner Bros. Archive Blu releases, there’s not an abundance of
special features offered outside of the film’s trailer and a commentary track.The latter item is particularly special, if
not unfamiliar to serious collectors.
The commentary track on this new Blu release has been
ported over from Warner’s DVD box set of 2007, Cult Camp Classics, Viol. 1: Sci-Fi Thrillers.On the bright side, the commentaries of film
historian Tom Weaver and actress Vickers are certainly worthy of preservation
on this second digital go round, the film’s first appearance in HD.Both Weaver, likely the finest author-commentator
of vintage Hollywood sci-fi and horror, and Vickers – present on set back in
1958 - offer wonderfully playful and often prescient insights and memories on
the making of the film.Vickers’s
contributions are now made all more special in 2023 as the actress/pin-up girl with
the great sense of humor has since passed.
Click here to order from the Cinema Retro Movie Store
Though the Bert I. Gordon’s and William Castle’s of 1950s-1960s
Hollywood were successful in grinding out a string of their own low-budget suspense
films, it’s clear they both aspired for recognition as auteurs of
psychological-thrillers in the Hitchcock tradition.Producer/Director Bert I. Gordon would throw
his hat into that particular ring with the redoubtable Picture Mommy Dead.The
screenplay for Gordon’s picture was written by Robert Sherman, a television
writer with no feature film credits. This was to be Gordon’s second film for Joseph
Levine’s Embassy Pictures, his first being the outrageous exploitation/sci-fi
flick Village of the Giants (1965) (“Teen-agers
Zoom to Supersize and Terrorize a Town!”).
Casting for Picture
Mommy Dead began as early as November of 1965, the trades reporting Levine had
hopes of reuniting Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews (of Otto Preminger’s classic
noir Laura (1944) for Color Mommy Dead (the provisional title
of the film).Though Tierney appeared to
be interested – she had been working before the camera only intermittently in
the mid-60s – on January 12, Gordon announced her part was instead given to actress
Martha Hyer, since “the role developed more into a Martha Hyer type of beauty
than a Gene Tierney type beauty.”
If Dana Andrews was on Levine’s wish list to take on the
role of Edward Shelley in the film, the actor was either already working on
another project or simply not interested.The part would go to Don Ameche whose recent roles were also occasional
and on television.In a classic example
of Hollywood nepotism, actress Susan Gordon – Bert’s daughter – would beat out eighty
actresses auditioning for the role of the troubled Susan Shelley.“I solved the second femme lead,” the
producer explained, “by giving it to my 16-year-old daughter, Susan, but I’ve
got to find still another lady before we start shooting at Paramount on January
24.”
That “lady” still to be cast as the filthy-rich Jessica
Flagmore Shelley was the sultry screen-legend Hedy Lamarr.On January 18, a mere six days before that
character’s first scheduled shoot was to take place at Beverly Hills Doheny
Estate, it was announced the notoriously reclusive and eccentric Lamarr had
accepted the role.It was reported her acceptance
was mostly due to the coaxing of Marvin Paige, a talent agent and occasional
on-the-town paramour of the aging glamour queen.
But if the film’s casting appeared settled, events would soon
take a dramatic turn.In the interim of winning
this “comeback” gig Lamarr, the Garbo-like fifty-one year-old actress, found
herself behind bars at the Sybil Brand Institution for Women.The actress had been caught shoplifting
eighty-six dollars’ worth of merchandise from a Wilshire Boulevard department
store.Following the posting of a $550 release
bond, Lamarr told a throng of reporters the shoplifting accusation was the
result of a “misunderstanding.”
It was an odd turn of events but on January 28, 1966, the
very same day Lamarr was to be arraigned, Gordon promised the actresses’
casting was safe.“This unfortunate happening
will make no difference in our plans,” the director/producer told the
press.“I’m behind her 100%.”But in the days between her brief
incarceration and her first scheduled on-set date, it was obvious things might
not work out. Picture Mommy Dead was already ten-days into its shooting schedule,
with another three weeks of work to go.Lamarr, who had yet been called before the cameras, was considered integral
to those next three-weeks.
Hollywood gossip maven Dorothy Manners reported Gordon’s optimistic
suggestion that “the concentration her role demands” would offer Lamarr a welcome
distraction from her recent petty theft indiscretions.But Manners chose to stir the pot further, making
a passing reference to Lamarr’s prima
donna declaration that she’d work only “between the hours of twelve noon
and five in the afternoon.”It was
Lamarr’s contention that “Any actress who steps before a camera before noon is
indecent.”
The resulting press was making everyone invested in the
film a little uneasy.Embassy was quick
to remind Gordon the budget of Picture
Mommy Dead was a cool one million.The film’s backers were, not surprisingly, concerned over Lamarr’s
eccentric behavior and public statements.Though some conceded in Hollywood even bad or sordid publicity might
prove beneficial in the long run, Gordon was told if he “couldn’t guarantee” Lamarr’s
physical and mental commitment to the project, the actress would need to be
replaced.
Gordon chose to ignore the warning signs, determined to push
forward with his original plan.On Wednesday
morning, February 2, a limousine was sent to pick up the embattled actress at
her home.The driver was given
instructions to deliver Lamarr to the grounds of the Doheny Estate where her first
scenes were to be filmed.But there was
a new twist. When the driver arrived as scheduled Lamarr was nowhere to be
found: a maid explained the actress wasn’t in residence.She told the driver the actress had been
admitted to Westwood hospital only hours earlier.
The maid’s explanation was countenanced by both Lamarr’s
doctor and attorney.They offered their
client was suffering from “nervous exhaustion,” but would be prepared to go
before the cameras two day’s hence on Friday the 4th. This of course was problematic as a crew was already
awaiting her arrival on location.The
filmmakers decided to check on the Lamarr’s physical and mental well-being
themselves.But when they arrived at the
hospital they learned there was no record of the actress having ever been
admitted.This news was enough for
Embassy to pull the plug on Lamarr’s return to the big screen.A spokesman explained to the press, “We have
too much involved in production costs to chance any delay.”Embassy then announced that actress Zsa Zsa
Gabor had already been offered and accepted the role of Jessica Flagmore
Shelley.
Though Lamarr threatened a legal challenge, her lawyers
would not ultimately pursue the case.“Gordon made it clear,” an Embassy spokesman offered, “that his decision
was in no way predicated upon Miss Lamarr’s recent arrest on shoplifting
charges.”Calling a press conference in
the backyard of her home on the very day of her losing her role in the film,
Lamarr contested all she really needed “was a good night’s sleep,”defiantly vowing to “never act again.” She held
true to her promise.The 1958 noir The Female Animal would remain her final
appearance in a feature film.
The firing put Gordon in an awkward position.He tried his best to smooth things over
before getting back to his work on the film.“I cannot afford to gamble on anyone’s health, but I do have tremendous
respect and admiration for Miss Lamarr as an actress as a woman.And whenever she feels she’s able to work I
have a story in which I would star her.”
In truth, the role Lamarr was ousted from likely wouldn’t
have brought her anything but the briefest return to glory.As the dearly departed Jessica Flagmore
Shelley, Zsa Zsa Gabor really doesn’t have all that much to do.She’s seen in a few brief silent sequences in
the first half of the film, later enjoying a slightly more expanded role near
the film’s climactic end.The crux of Picture Mommy Dead is the mysterious
circumstances surrounding mommy’s death.Was it an unfortunate accident?Or was it murder?
The film offers red herrings aplenty.Shelley’s daughter Susan (Susan Gordon) is convinced
she’s solely responsible for her mother’s fiery demise.Such thoughts clouding her “fragile mind” would
cause her to spend three years convalescing at a convent.Susan’s father Edward (Don Ameche) arrives at
the convent to bring his daughter back home to the estate, bringing along his
new wife Francine (Martha Hyer), Susan’s scheming former governess.The kindly nun (Signe Hasso) who has been
caring for Susan since Jessica’s death warns the couple the young girl is still
not in a good place, traumatized by “phantoms of the past” and “vivid, horrid
nightmares.”
Bringing Susan home to the Shelley estate was, to put it
mildly, probably not the best of father’s decisions. For starters, there’s plenty of Peyton Place-style intrigue at play in
and around the palatial grounds: infidelities, back stabbings and duplicitous
folks scheming to get their paws on the sizable inheritance due Susan.The screenplay’s riddling mystery is who – or
whom – are behind the cruel plan to drive Susan out of her mind so they can
steal away the Shelley fortune.
The film as written is an uneasy pairing of those old-fashioned
mansion-dagger-inheritance mysteries of the 1930s made fresh with a dollop of
psychological mumbo-jumbo.I’m guessing
Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964) served as a
partial template for Sherman’s scripting. In fact, I kept thinking of Tippi Hedren’s
character of Marnie throughout the entirety of Picture Mommy Dead since Martha Hyer’s hairstyle is
near-identical.To be fair, the
difference ends there.Hedren’s Marnie
was simply a troubled gal, Hyer’s Francine is simply trouble.
Though there are a couple of interesting plot twists here
and there – and a falconry scene involving Susan running in terror for safety
is mildly suspenseful – Picture Mommy
Dead is, at best, a workmanlike feature.Neither a great film nor a poor one, it’s a semi-suspenseful time-waster
which attempts to hitch a formulaic murder mystery with Jungian psychoanalysis.Not so successfully, in my opinion.
This is no slight on director-producer Bert I.
Gordon.We “monster kids” of a certain
generation revere the filmmaker for his work on such cult classics as Beginning of the End (giant
grasshoppers), The Amazing Colossal Man
(giant nuclear blast survivor), The
Cyclops (giant mutation), The Spider
(giant spider) Food of the Gods
(giant rodents) and Empire of the Ants
(giant ants) etc. etc. But with Picture Mommy Dead, Gordon found himself
deep in the shadow of a cinematic giant of another sort, one more difficult to
triumph over: Alfred Hitchcock.
This Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu-ray edition of Picture Mommy Dead is presented in 1920
x 1080p, with a ratio of 1.85:1, dts sound and removable English
sub-titles.The film looks brilliant,
Kino engineering this new issue from a new 4K restoration. The set rounds off
with five theatrical trailers that support other Kino product as well as an
audio commentary courtesy of writer-producer-directors Howard S. Berger and
Nathaniel Thompson.
Robert
Shaw, Harrison Ford and Edward Fox lead “Force 10 from Navarone,” available on
Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. Based on the 1968 Alistair MacLean novel of the same
name, it was initially announced a movie was to follow. After the huge success
of “The Guns of Navarone,” a sequel was a no-brainer. The classic “The Guns of
Navarone” is among the greatest adventure movies ever made and serves as the
template for every “Men on an Impossible Mission” movie that followed. There
were other similar movies that preceded it, but MacLean nailed the formula with
a mix of action, adventure, suspense with a dash of spy thriller tossed in for
good measure. However, the sequel would wait nearly two decades until its release
in 1978.
The
plot of the sequel, like the previous movie, involves sabotage behind enemy
lines with Mallory, Robert Shaw replacing Gregory Peck, Edward Fox covering for
David Niven as Miller and joined by fresh-faced Harrison Ford as Barnsby, who
is presumably the stand in for Anthony Quinn’s Andrea Stavrou. Ford leads Force
10 on a mission to Yugoslavia to meet up with local partisans in order to
locate a traitor from Navarone. This being a movie based on an Alistair MacLean
novel, the story also involves double crosses, blowing up a dam and uncovering a
traitor.
As
I alluded to earlier, the sequel was going to be made in 1967 with Carl
Foreman, MacLean and the three leads from the previous film (Peck, Niven and
Quinn) reprising their roles. MacLean completed a screenplay which he adapted
into the novel, “Force 10 From Navarone” which was released in 1968. MacLean
would do the same thing with “Where Eagles Dare” writing the screenplay and
then adapting it as a novel before the movie. Readers of the novel “Force 10
From Navarone” will note this movie has little resemblance to the 1968 novel or
the original screenplay written in 1967. This change and the long wait for the
sequel probably contributed to a less-than-thrilling box office take.
“Force
10 from Navarone” isn’t a bad film, but it was misguided in the approach taken
to bring it to the big screen. While the movie has aged rather well, in
hindsight it would have been better had the filmmakers stuck with the original treatment
including all the original characters. I remember seeing “Force 10 from
Navarone” in the theater on its original release with great anticipation, and
while it’s not quite up to the classic status of “The Guns of Navarone,” it was
a pretty good effort. The movie opens with some of the climactic footage from
“The Guns of Navarone” as a pre-credits scene, but it just reminds viewers of
the missed opportunity if the movie would have been made back in 1967.
The
film adds great production value with location shooting in Yugoslavia and the
bevy of great supporting players. The movie was directed by James Bond veteran veteran
Guy Hamilton and boasts a bit of a 007 past and future cast and crew reunion.
Shaw, as I’m sure readers recall, was Red Grant in “From Russia with Love.” The
film also includes “The Spy Who Loved Me” alumni Barbara Bach and Richard Kiel
as partisans, and Edward Fox, who would play “M” in “Never Say Never Again.” The
movie also features Carl Weathers as Weaver, an American soldier who joins the
Force 10 team, Franco Nero as the leader of the partisans, Philip Latham as
Jenson (replacing James Robertson Justice), and Alan Badel as Petrovich. Sharp-eyed
viewers will catch Wolf Kahler and Michael Byrne as Nazis a few years prior to
appearing again as Nazis in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Indiana Jones and
the Last Crusade,” respectively. “Star Wars” fans should also watch for several
actors who appeared in one or more of the original trilogy films, and of course
Harrison Ford was Han Solo and Indiana Jones. There’s a great party game here ala,
“Spot the connections to Bond, Star Wars and Indiana Jones.”
The
movie clocks in at 126 minutes and looks and sounds terrific on this Blu-ray
release by Kino Lorber. The music by Ron Goodwin is good, if a bit too jolly at
times. The extras include an outstanding audio commentary by Steve Mitchell and
Steven Jay Rubin as well as the trailers for this and other Alistair MacLean
releases. There is also reversible sleeve artwork. I highly recommend this Blu-ray release.
It’s
quite possible that there are more podcasts about cinema these days than there
are cinemas. Given such saturation, podcast creators have to work hard to make
their movie shows stand out from the competition. It is to film critic John Bleasdale’s
credit then that he’s managed to find a singular cinematic theme to concentrate
on, yet one with a vastly broad range of potential subjects and guests.
Writers
On Film is the only podcast dedicated to books on cinema and it is only a few
film-chats away from its 100th episode. Readers of Cinema Retro will no doubt
have at least one Movie section within their bookshelves. Search the authors’ names
on the spines of some of your most recent purchases and there’s a very good
chance you’ll find one of the many guests on Writers on Film.
Bleasdale,
a respected critic who has written for The Times, The Guardian, The
Independent, Sight and Sound and many others was, like so many creatives
looking for something to get him through the lockdown. ‘Because of Covid there
were no releases,’ he says, ‘so I was scrabbling around for things to write
that didn’t require being topical; I didn’t want to do a review podcast or
anything like that. I knew a few people who had written books that I’d met in
film festivals: former editor of Premiere Glenn Kenny was one. My brother had
sent me over a couple of beautiful books for Christmas, the Scorsese book by
Tom Shone and Ian Nathan’s book on Ridley Scott, so I originally thought I’d
just interview a few of these authors.
‘I
noticed that a lot of film writers were promoting their work on Twitter so I
reached out to them and eventually, I had enough of a response to realise this
was a podcast. Initially, the idea was to do about 10 episodes, because I
thought my guest list would have dried up by then, but here we are now crossing
the hundred mark.’
The
guest list has now blossomed into a who’s who of the cinema literature genre.
Scroll back through the episodes and you’ll find Sam Wasson talking about his
Chinatown book The Big Goodbye, Gabriel Byrne discussing his memoir, and Julie
Salamon revisiting her landmark book The Devil’s Candy. In between, there’s
everything from Spike Lee to Buster Keaton via Michael Cimino, Biblical epics,
women vs Hollywood, and George Stevens Jr reminiscing about about Hollywood’s
Golden Age.
Bleasdale
has a convivial, conversational style and the loose format allows space for the
guests to open up about their work, rather than just give quick soundbites.
Occasionally you can hear a guest, perhaps a little tentative at first, relax
and unwind once they realise they’re talking with someone who knows of which he
speaks and isn’t there to trap them.
(Photo:John Bleasdale)
His
love of film books goes back to his youth in Barrow in Furness. ‘The very first
ones were novelisations by writers like Alan Dean Foster, who I was lucky to
have on the podcast. It’s such a legendary name that I was actually surprised
that he was a person!Books and film
really cross over for me. When I couldn’t sneak in to see Blade Runner at the
cinema, because I was ten when it came out and it was an ‘A,’ I bought the
Philip K Dick book with Harrison Ford on the cover and lived in that book as
though it was the movie.’
‘My
auntie was a librarian so I would get all these cinema books out and run up
terrible fines because I was useless at returning them. There was The Cinema of
Loneliness by Robert P. Kolker, with Travis Bickle on the cover, and other one
was the Kubrick book by Michel Ciment (another Writers on Film guest), which
was stunning and so deep and fascinating, and of course this was when we couldn’t
actually see A Clockwork Orange. I became fascinated not just by his films but
by understanding that there was a mind behind these films which was separately
fascinating: if he’d never made a single film, an interview with Kubrick would
have been extraordinary in itself.’
What
the disparate list of guests and themes investigated on Writers on Film
demonstrates is the enormous breadth of subjects that can be categorised under
the Cinema Literature umbrella. ‘It’s pretty much limitless,’ says Bleasdale. ‘If
you want to write a book on cinema, good luck because the hardest thing to find
is a subject that hasn’t been covered, which is good for me because I can find
lots of things to talk about and it’s always different.’
It’s
refreshing to hear that Movie Books are still thriving, despite the potentially
smothering factor of the internet. Bleasdale thinks they have survived by
evolving in the face of competition online. ‘There are cinema books on
bestseller lists these days. The ‘90s were a heyday for a very specific kind of
cinema book. The Faber books were great and some of those authors have been on
the podcast, but they did tend to be interview books. Nowadays, if I want to
find out what Martin Scorsese once said about so-and-so, with YouTube and
Google and even DVD commentaries, that information is now so much more
accessible than it was back then.
‘Today,
there’s more engagement with putting films into a historical context: Peter
Biskind was one of the first writers who launched this idea with Easy Riders,
Raging Bulls and Down and Dirty Pictures. Nowadays people like Sam Wasson and
Glenn Frankel are really running with that. Glenn Frankel’s books are just so
deep and interesting and go so far beyond cinema into history, politics and
society and culture generally. Mark Harris is another: calling Scenes from A
Revolution a ‘film book’ is quite limiting. You learn so much not just about
Hollywood but about everything that went on in 1967.Coffee table books have never been more
varied in terms of subject matter or looked better. The recent one on Sofia
Coppola by Hannah Strong looks stunning.’
Writers
on Film is an ear-feast for cinema fans but don’t get too carried away with the
recommendations or, to paraphrase Chief Martin Brody, you’re gonna need a
bigger bookshelf.
(Search
for Writers on Film wherever you find your podcasts. Click here to visit official web site.)
70-year old Philip Marlowe is snooping around in the dark
alleys of an ersatz 1939 Los Angeles beating up punks and turning down sexual
advances from black-eyed blondes. That’s pretty much what we get in the new
Neil Jordan-directed “Marlowe,” the latest in a long line of film noirs
featuring Raymond Chandler’s mythic private dick. He’s been played by Humphrey
Bogart, Robert Mitchum, Dick Powell, James Garner and Robert Montgomery, and
others. Seventy-year-old Liam Neeson, in his 100th movie, takes a
crack at the character this time around, and comes off a bit shopworn and
somewhat out of focus.
One reason for the slightly out of focus presentation of
Chandler’s urban knight—the man who lives by a code and walks the mean streets
of LA “neither tarnished nor afraid,” – is that the script by William Monahan
is based not on one of Chandler’s novels, but on a “Chandler-estate-approved
novel” called, “The Black Eyed Blonde” by Irish novelist John Banville. The
novel and the film have a seemingly simple plot. Claire Cavendish (Diane
Kruger), a married blonde heiress with black eyes, hires Marlowe to find Nico
Peterson, her missing lover, a movie stunt man. Of course, nothing is ever
really that simple in a Marlowe story, because no sooner does the investigation
get underway than Nico turns up dead in a parking lot of the Cabana Club with
his skull crushed by a car, which makes a positive identification somewhat tricky.
Except his body was identified by his sister. That seems to settle the matter
of identification, until later on the sister is beaten, tortured and killed,
and Marlowe wonders what’s up with that?
Marlowe’s employer refuses to believe that her lover is
dead. She wants him to keep digging and find out if he’s alive and where he’s
hiding. Marlowe’s quest for the truth brings him into contact with the usual weird
assortment of film noir characters, including Dorothy Quincannon (Jessica Lange,
who is first presented as Claire’s mother and then in a plot shift that seemed
borrowed from “Chinatown” turns out to be Claire’s aunt. “She’s my daughter.
She’s my niece. She’s my . . .”) In fact, the shadow of “Chinatown” looms even
more ominously over “Marlowe” with the introduction of night club owner Floyd
Hanson played by John Huston’s son Danny Huston, who basically gives Marlowe
the old spiel John Huston’s Noah Cross gave Jake Gittes about life being so
fouled up it’s impossible for anyone to do any good in this world. But that
doesn’t stop Marlowe. He keeps sniffing and snooping, running into creeps like crooked
antiques dealer Lou Hendricks (Alan Cumming), a cross between Clifton Webb and
Tennessee Williams, and his driver Cedric (Akinnuoye-Agbaje), who’s pretty big
and pretty handy with a machine gun.
Jordan, Monahan and Neeson try their best to do justice
to Chandler’s Marlowe, but it’s hit and miss at best. Neeson pulls off the
“world-weary hero” look, but it’s obviously not much of a stretch. There’s basically
some inconsistency in Monahan’s script. At times the characters utter lines
that cop quotes from Christopher Marlowe, with references to the Bard, that somehow
seem as artificial as a BBC teleplay. Marlowe keeps telling everybody he’s just
an average guy, a working stiff, but still everyone treats him with some kind
of awe, with one character telling him he lives like a monk. It’s like the
filmmakers on one hand want to show Marlowe is just a tough guy doing
everybody’s dirty work, nothing special, while at the same time trying to
canonize him as a saint.
The use of locations in Barcelona and Dublin shot with a
reddish filter give “Marlowe” a dated look, but there are few if any wider
shots showing L.A. as it was in1939 so you get a claustrophobic feeling. You
wish Neeson would wander off the set once in a while and get a drink somewhere
in a bar down on Long Beach, with the oil wells pumping in the background. L.A.
was always a character in Chandler’s books. Its absence here is a real
handicap. Another troublesome aspect is David Holmes’ soundtrack score. The repeated
use of “These Foolish Things” in the background, kept reminding me more of Monica
Lewinsky (it was her and Bill’s favorite song, according to her) than the plot
involving Claire Cavendish. And there is one scene where Marlowe drives his
Plymouth coupe onto the grounds of a palatial chateau where the band playing
“Brazil” at full volume sounds more like Ernie Kovacs’ Nairobi Trio. Why were
there so many Tangos played over the course of a film set in ’39 in L.A.?
A weird side note: “Marlowe” is no classic, but it does
have something in common with one of the great ones ---Howard Hawks’ classic, “The
Big Sleep (1946).” When Hawks was filming “The Big Sleep,” (1946) there’s a
scene where a limo drives off a pier and the driver drowns. The screenwriters
(Leigh Brackett, William Faulkner, and Jules Furthman) asked Hawks who killed
him. Hawks didn’t know and they contacted Chandler and he said he didn’t know
either. In “Marlowe” someone is killed and has his skull crushed so it would
look like it was Nico Peterson. But it turned out it wasn’t Nico. So who was
it? Never explained. Who cares? Just
another bit player, another nameless face lost in the blurry background of
Tinseltown.
“Marlowe” may not go down as a great addition to the
Marlowe canon but it’s better than nothing and despite its flaws, it is good to
see serious movie makers trying their hand at it, even if not that
successfully. There’s a need for someone to do Philip Marlowe justice,
especially now.
The
plot of Dario Argento’s much-maligned 1985 thriller Phenomena has long been the subject of ridicule and derision by
critics and fans alike since its initial release. The inevitable complaints
about the film range from the bad dubbing and stiff performances to the
ludicrous notion that insects can be employed as detectives in a homicide
investigation (this is true and has actually been done, providing the
inspiration for the film. A November 1996 episode of television’s Forensic Files even featured
an episode about this very method).
If the film does not sound familiar, that could be attributed to the fact that Phenomena was severely cut by some 33
minutes and retitled Creepers when it
opened in New York on Friday, August 30, 1985.
Jennifer
Corvino (Jennifer Connelly) is a fourteen year-old student attending an
all-girls school in Switzerland while her movie star father is away for the
better part of a year shooting a film. Her mother, who left the family when
Jennifer was a child, is merely mentioned but never seen. Unfortunately, her
roommate Sophie (Federica
Mastroianni) has just informed her that the school is
beset by a killer who stalks girls their age and kills them. Well, that is unfortunate! You would think that someone would order
the school closed and the girls sent away. As you can imagine, this does not
sit too well with Jennifer who suffers from a bad case of sleepwalking and
manages to find herself embroiled in the very murders she was hoping to avoid. She
meets entomologist John McGregor, a wheelchair-bound Scot who lacks a Scottish
accent but possesses an avuncular disposition that endears Jennifer to him and
his chimpanzee Inga who doubles as his nurse. Fortunately for Jennifer, he is
aiding the police in their investigation into the murder of a Danish tourist,
Vera Brandt (Fiore Argento, the director’s eldest daughter) and the
disappearance of McGregor’s former aid. Together with the help of McGregor,
Inga (yes, the chimp!) and a very large fly, Jennifer sets off to locate the
murderer. When she does, she has a very good reason to nearly regret it.
Phenomena is an unusual entry in
the Dario Argento universe as it is a mashup of fantasy and giallo-esque
murder mystery, effectively making some to refer to the film as a fairytale. Jennifer
Connelly was chosen by Mr. Argento to play the lead as he had seen her in
Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in
America (1984) and he thought she would be perfect for the film. His
decision to set the film in the Swiss Alps is unorthodox but provides the
perfect backdrop to the story as the scenery is utterly breathtaking. He also
makes terrific use of the Steadi-cam and it never feels over-used. From a
thematic standpoint, the film also deals with a subject I never would have
thought of: female abandonment. Critic and devoted Argentophile Maitland
McDonagh brought up this point when Mr. Argento discussed the film at the
Walter Reade Theatre in June 2022 at a retrospective
of his work. She is right: Vera is
abandoned by the bus (accidentally), Sophie is abandoned by her boyfriend,
Jennifer is abandoned by her mother (in an explanation left out of Creepers),
and even Inga is abandoned by her keeper.
Phenomena has been released on home video more times than I can
count, and I have personally owned it in the past as Creepers from the
original Media Home Entertainment VHS release from 1986; as Phenomena in
the form of the gatefold Japanese laserdisc pressing in 1997; the 1999 American
laserdisc release from The Roan Group; the 2008 DVD pressing as part of a
package of four other titles; the 2011 single Blu-ray from Arrow Films; the
2017 Blu-ray steelbook from Synapse Films; the 2017 Limited Edition Blu-ray from
Arrow Films with newly commissioned artwork by Candice Tripp, and the 2023 4K
UHD Blu-ray set from Arrow Films. Whew…Now, Synapse Films follows suit with
their own release of the film in yet another 4K UHD Blu-ray edition, this time
in a limited edition pressing with less-than-spectacular cover artwork design.
However, there is a more cost-effective edition that has made me giddy with
excitement. I must say that as a Dario Argento fan, and Phenomena being
my favorite film of his, the new pressing of this standard edition from Synapse
Films is a must-buy if only for the absolutely beautiful, gorgeous, and atmospheric
cover artwork that has been newly commissioned by artist Nick Charge. As a
purist, I generally shy away from artwork that is anything other than the key
art used in the original exhibition of the film. I do not wish to sound stuffy
or, heaven forbid, pretentious regarding this point, but it has been my
experience that the key art used in promoting a film is generally the best and
most effective artwork that has been used, regardless of the title in question,
though there have been exceptions. The original style “B” poster for Dan
Curtis’s 1976 thriller Burnt Offerings I have found to be infinitely
more interesting and creepy than the lesser-used style “A” artwork; Conversely,
Saul Bass’s beautiful mockup of the contorted face in the black lettering set
against a yellow background in the style “A” for Stanley Kubrick’s The
Shining (1980) was, is, and always will be far more effective to me than
the requisite and now tongue-in-cheek “Here’s Johnny!” image of Jack
Nicholson’s crazed visage peering at his wife through the remnants of the
bathroom door.
In the
case of Phenomena, which was trimmed and altered significantly for its
American debut and retitled Creepers, the original Italian key artwork by
the late great artist Enzo Sciotti was discarded altogether in favor of a poster
that focused on Jennifer Connelly holding flies in her hand, and the America
video poster went even further to have the insects remove the flesh from half
of her face! Nick Charge’s artwork is one of the most spectacular alternative promotional
images of the film that I have ever seen.
Watching
Phenomena again makes me realize just
how much I miss Daria Nicolodi, Mr. Argento’s long-time girlfriend who appeared
in six films for him. She brought so much to his work, and her absence is
deeply felt more than ever now. In Deep
Red (1975), she played the
wonderfully sweet journalist, redubbed by Carolyn de Fonseca; in Inferno she’s the strange Elise Stallone
Van Adler who keeps finding paint on her foot; in Tenebre (1982) she’s Peter Neal’s secretary Anne, redubbed by
Theresa Russel of all people; here in Phenomena
she’s the sinister Frau Bruckner, again redubbed by Carolyn de Fonseca; in Opera (1987) she is Mira, and this was
the first time that her actual voice was used; and La Terza Madre (2007) she is Elisa Mandy (again with her own voice).
Donald
Pleasence is also quite good as the entomologist. Some have complained about
his performance, but I have never seen him give anything less than 100% in his
roles, however off-beat. His presence in a horror film is always welcome. Check
him out in Gary Sherman’s Death Line
(1972). He is unorthodox and brilliant.
The new
4K UHD Blu-ray standard edition from Synapse Films is gorgeous and only
contains 4K UHD Blu-rays. There are no standard Blu-rays or DVDs in this
package. Phenomena has more
detractors than admirers if you believe what you read, and even staunch
proponents of Mr. Argento’s vision (Maitland McDonagh and Alan Jones) have
written off the film as silly. However, the amount of love and dedication that
has been lavished upon this film restoring it to its former glory on Blu-ray
says volumes about those who cherish it. This set is absolutely beautiful and
definitely worth the price of an upgrade as it sports the following:
Two
4K UHD Blu-rays which consist of three (3) different cuts of the film, all
available in high-definition for the first time ever in one collector’s edition
package:
the
83-minute United States Creepers cut
in HD
the
110-minute International Phenomena
cut in HD
the 116-minute English/Italian hybrid
audio Phenomena cut in HD
Extras:
Disc One includes the Italian language cut of Phenomena.
There is a disclaimer: “No English audio exists for scenes unique to the
Italian version of Phenomena. This full-length version can be viewed
either entirely in Italian, or in a hybrid version which uses Italian audio in
instances where English audio is unavailable.” You can choose from English /
Italian Hybrid in 5.1 Surround, or Italian 5.1 Surround, or Italian 2.0
Surround.
There
is an audio commentary by Troy Howarth, author of Murder by Design: The
Unsane Cinema of Dario Argento (on Italian Version). Mr. Howarth proves
himself to be a fountain of knowledge about Italian horror and this film in
particular.
There
is a 2017 documentary produced by Arrow Films called Of Flies and Maggots,
which runs two hours(!), including interviews with co-writer/producer/director
Dario Argento, actors Fiore Argento, Davide Marotta, Daria Nicolodi and others.
Much of the information presented here is already familiar to die-hard fans,
but it is a welcome look at the film.
“Jennifer”
is a music video of the Phenomena theme by former Goblin member Claudio
Simonetti, directed by Dario Argento, and featuring Jennifer Connelly.
The
promotional materials consist of: the Italian theatrical trailer, the
International theatrical trailer, and a page-by-page replica of the Japanese
pressbook.
Disc Two consists of both the international cut of Phenomena
and the U.S. Creepers cut.
There
is an audio commentary track on Phenomena
(the 110-minute cut) moderated by film
historian, journalist and radio/television commentator David Del Valle, who
speaks exclusively with Argento scholar and Derek Botelho, author of the
excellent book The Argento Syndrome. The discussion is both spirited and
informative as Mr. Botelho clearly knows his stuff. I love listening to
commentaries that tell me anecdotes that I either forgot about or never knew
before, and there is plenty of interesting info here.
The
Three Sarcophagi is a
visual essay by Arrow Films producer Michael Mackenzie comparing the different
cuts of Phenomena, and it is enough to make your head spin trying to
keep track of the different versions. This piece runs 31 minutes.
Rounding out the extras are the U.S. theatrical trailer and
two U.S. radio spots for Creepers.
Phenomena is not Mr. Argento’s best. IMHO, Deep Red (1975) holds that title, and it also could be argued that Tenebrae
(1982) is a contender for that mantle as well. It is, however, a terrifically
entertaining murder mystery with some great set pieces and a driving score by
some members of Goblin among others, and the sort of gonzo film that the
Italian Maestro has not made since Opera in 1987.
The Cinerama Releasing Co. was in its seventh year of film
distribution in 1973.The distributor
had earned a reputation in the industry for working successfully with producers
to distribute independent films.Such business
partnerships had proven beneficial to both parties.In 1973 Cinerama scored big with two
modest-budget indie hits: Michael Campus’s Blaxploitation pic The Mack (1973) and Phil Karlson’s Walking Tall (1973).Since the horror film genre was a (mostly) dependable
box office gamble for low-budget film productions, Cinerama scored handsomely
in 1972 with the domestically produced Willard
rat-fest and the decidedly more up-scale and colorfully creepy Amicus-import Tales from the Crypt.
Hoping to continue to capitalize on this successful
trend, Cinerama was preparing to distribute a slate of new horrors in 1973: the
British Amicus production And Now the
Screaming Starts, the U.S. produced mystery-horror Terror in the Wax Museum, and indie Freedom Art’s Doctor Death.Box
Office reported in September of 1973, that Cinerama had only recently acquired
the rights to Doctor Death.It promised the film would showcase “optical
effects unseen before on screen... the illusion of souls passing from one body
to another.”That was they called ballyhoo.We’d actually seen it all before, as the effects
offered in Doctor Death had been
present as early as the silent film era.Doctor Death, whose full title
is actually Doctor Death: Seeker of Souls,
was the brainchild of producer/director Eddie Saeta and associate producer/screenwriter
Sal Ponti.It was the latter’s first
(and only) produced screenplay. Ponti worked mostly – if infrequently - as a
film actor and occasional songwriter.In
contrast, director Saeta had a long-running career in Hollywood, working on
studio lots and behind the camera from 1937 on.He was second generation Hollywood.Saeta’s dad had worked in the electrical department for Columbia Pictures
from the late 1920s on.
It was through his father’s connections that Eddie Saeta worked
as a messenger for Columbia studio chief Harry Cohn.He worked his way through the ranks,
ultimately serving as an assistant or 2nd unit director for such
studios as Columbia and Monogram.He mostly
assisted in churning out such low-budget fares as westerns, East Side Kids
films and even The Three Stooges in Orbit
(1962).(That latter film explains the
curious and brief walk through of septuagenarian Moe Howard in Doctor Death).In his later years, Saeta also worked
extensively as an AD on television. Eagle-eyed James Bond fans might also
recognize Saeta’s name from his front end credit as co-Location Manager for
1971’s Diamonds are Forever.
Ponti’s original script wasn’t uninteresting in
concept.Distraught over the loss of his
wife in a deadly automobile accident he blames on himself, Dr. Fred Saunders
(Barry Coe) goes to great lengths to see her revived by supernatural means.He visits her corpse daily where she lies in
state in a conveniently unlocked crypt.Though his friend Greg (Stewart Moss) presses, “For God sake, let Laura
rest in peace!” Fred is unable to do so.He visits any number of charlatans who profess revivification but who
are unable to deliver on their promises.
Things change when Fred meets Tana (Florence Marley) who
professes the greatness of an ex-magician known as “Doctor Death” (John
Considine). She describes the not-so-good Doctor as, “The genius of all ages,
the man who has conquered death.” The problem with Doctor Death is that while
he’s actually pretty good in his practice of “selective reincarnation,” he also
displays many characteristics you’d prefer your resurrectionist to not have: he’s a pompous, selfish,
sadistic, pervert with a necrophilic bent.
He’s also a vampire… of a sort.We learn Doctor Death is more than a thousand
year’s old.He sustains himself not on
the feeding of blood of his victims, but by the absorption of their souls.Dracula, of course, is Dracula.He too may be a thousand or so years old, but
he manages to retain his original physical appearance through the centuries.As someone who absorbs the souls of others,
Doctor Death conversely takes on the physical appearance of whomever his latest
victim might be.Through his soul
absorptions, the doctor has appeared over centuries in any number of multi-racial,
multi-ethic and transgender forms.The
problem facing the grieving Fred is that Doctor Death, the heralded “genius of
all ages,” has been unable to rustle up a suitable fresh corpse to transpose
its soul to that of the still very dead Linda.Which was sort of the point of Fred’s hiring him.
Doctor
Death was released in November of 1973, the film
unflatteringly described by one critic as, “one of a handful of year end
grotesqueries being dumped into theaters like a movie distributor’s version of
a clearance table.”The reviews of Doctor Death were, in fact, mostly poor
to middling.A Pittsburgh Press critic offered, the picture looked “like a grainy
blow-up of a 16mm film and with the sort of flat soundtrack that usually
accompanies porno films, this would-be horror item is horrible in ways not
intended.”But I’d say such criticism is
a bit unfair.Though the film’s Colorlab visuals are dark and gritty,
this is after all an early 1970s production.Some of the film’s exterior’s sequences were photographed in and around
Los Angeles’s Sunset Boulevard.It was
intended to appear a bit seedy.
I’d argue the cinematography of Emil Oster and Kent
Wakeford – both pros - was at least on par with such contemporary L.A. based horror-themed
productions as The Night Stalker, the
Count Yorga and Blacula films, and TV’s Night
Gallery. In any case, if one’s nostalgic for the 1970s, this film is for
you.The first-half of the decade is duly
represented by telltale flashes of ‘70s hairstyles and clothing, of gaudy apartment
furnishings and oversize gas-guzzling automobiles.
Doctor
Death is occasionally defended as a misunderstood horror-comedy.That’s a bit of a stretch though it’s clear
that Ponti’s script did try to lace his tale with a sprinkling of graveyard
humor.The problem is that the satire,
as written, is just too subtle (or perhaps so poorly played throughout) that
many critics missed this angle.Variety thought the film too
melodramatic and this, they reckoned, is what invoked “unconscious laughs” by
those attending.But perhaps some of
those chuckles were intentional.The Louisville
Courier-Journal, on the other hand, saw no humor in the film at all.They lambasted, “A new horror has been
released from the creaky medieval dungeons, and to tell the honest truth, [it]
should have stayed there.”
Well, I disagree. Doctor Death, while no classic, does
manage to offer ninety-minutes of dark entertainment and a smile or two.The Los
Angeles Times was one of the few newspapers to recognize the film’s lighter
aspects, describing Doctor Death as a
“silly but kinda cute and ultimately entertaining spoof” of the horror-pic biz -
with Considine playing the role of an “ersatz John Carradine.”The San
Francisco Examiner also noted Doctor
Death was, in essence, “a gruesome horror film that tries unsuccessfully to
equate merriment with slaughter.”“The
film sustains a certain amount of suspense,” its critic conceded.“But its unpleasant theme is quite repellant,
especially in sequences that suggest Considine’s necrophilic [sic] persuasion.”
New York’s Independent
Film Journal thought Considine’s performance, “rampantly theatrical, and
that’s not a help because he isn’t rampantly hammy as well.And it would take an actor as overblown as
Vincent Price to get some good fun into the good doctor.” This is a pretty prescient observation.Throughout Doctor Death, I also reflected on how Considine’s cool portrayal of
the loathsome magician-turned-resurrectionist was simply off.He was OK when the role tasked him to be manipulative
and sinister, but the absence of black-comedy winks are also painfully in evidence.It would
have taken someone of Vincent Price’s caliber to pull it off.Price had, managed to successfully mix horror
and humor a decade earlier in such earlier productions as Roger Corman’s The Raven (1963) and Jacques Tourneur’s The Comedy of Terrors (1963).And, of course, in the more recent and devilishly
tongue-in-cheek horror classic Theatre of
Blood.
It’s of some interest to note that Price was about to play
a character named “Dr. Death” in the forthcoming Amicus/A.I.P. co- production
of Madhouse (1974).It’s likely had Saeta’s flick not beaten Madhouse to the gate, the Price film
might even have been released under it’s working title: The Revenge of Dr. Death.It’s almost certain the poor box-office reception of Cinerama’s Doctor Death was part of the decision of
the Madhouse team’s intent to re-title
and separate their new Vincent Price/Peter Cushing vehicle far from Saeta’s
bargain basement production.
It’s also worth noting that even Cinerama and
theater-owners thought Doctor Death not
strong enough to stand alone.The film
wasn’t playing on many upscale first-run screens, the picture almost completely
relegated to grindhouses and west-coast drive-ins.Depending on the market, Doctor Death was part of a double or triple feature bill.These combo-bills mixed newish pics (Scream, Blacula, Scream (1973) and The Legend of Hell House (1973), with psychological
thrillers and mysteries (Scream, Baby,
Scream (1969), The Butcher
(1970), Bluebeard (1972), The Other (1972) and A Name for Evil (1973).The film was also paired with an assortment
of horror pictures on their second and third runs: (Count Yorga, Vampire (1970), Countess
Dracula (1971), Lady Frankenstein
(1971), The House That Dripped Blood (1971)
and Asylum (1972).There were even a few golden oldies sprinkled
into the bills when prints were available: (The
Pit and the Pendulum (1964) and the incongruous A Long Ride from Hell (1968), a spaghetti western with Steve (Hercules)
Reeves.
Even with such support, the box-office of Doctor Death was mostly weak.In its first week of screenings in San
Francisco, the film pulled in a mere $4,500.When the film rolled out regionally, it pulled in only $2,500 on its
first week Pittsburgh, but did slightly better in Detroit with a take of
$4,000.But as Christmas week
approached, even the Detroit sank to $2,500.The film did some surprising first week receipts in Chicago with a gross
of $30,000.It might have been helpful
that in Chicago the film had been paired as a double with the old school mystery
Terror in the Wax Museum: a film featuring
familiar faces (Ray Milland, Elsa Lanchester, John Carradine and Broderick
Crawford). Regardless, the combo’s take in the Windy City dropped to $16,500 on
week two and (as per Variety) a “tepid”
$10,000 of earnings on week three.Though the film seemed destined to play New York City’s “Deuce” strip on
its initial run, by mid-January of 1974, Doctor
Death would only made it to screens near the upper regions of New York
State before disappearing completely from sight.
In any event, the folks at Scorpion Releasing are making
sure that Doctor Death doesn’t
disappear from your home video screen. This release, taken from a 2015
High-Definition master from the Original Camera Negative is as good as it
likely will ever look.The special
features include both an audio commentary and separate interview with actor
John Considine, as well the reminiscences of director Eddie’s son, Steve.The set arounds out with the film’s trailer
and a “new” light-hearted introduction courtesy of Doctor Death himself.I suggest fans of 1970s fringy horror make
their appointment with doctor.
Stella Stevens, the beautiful and talented American
actress, who enjoyed a long career, passed away on February 17. She was 84.
Stella was my friend.
We became friends in early 2000 when I co-hosted a
benefit screening of The Poseidon Adventure on board the Queen Mary ocean liner
in Long Beach, CA. Stella was gorgeous and wonderful during the question and
answer portion of the evening. Stella loved her fans, and she sparkled on stage
between Shelley Winters and Pamela Sue Martin. Over the years, a group of
mutual friends would have a potluck dinner and show Stella’s films on a 16mm projector.
Halfway through the film, we would have desert. Stella told fascinating stories
about the films we saw and how they were made. She had a great sense of humor,
and the evening was always filled with laughter.
Stella loved animals, especially her cats and her horses.
She had an outdoor spirit, but she could easily dress up and look every inch a
movie star. Somewhere I read that Stella was one of the most photographed women
on earth in the 1960s. Stella was extremely talented and left behind a large
body of work. She was requested to be in films by some of the major male actors
and directors in the business.
Stella was very kind to me. She invited me to her home,
she had lunch with me in Beverly Hills, and she had dinner at my home many
times. She was gracious to everyone. I shared holidays with Stella and her
partner, Bob, on several occasions. Laughter and friendship is what I think of
when I think of Stella.
Rest in peace.
(James Radford is the author of "Adventures on the
Queen Mary".)
Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Paramount Home Video:
Called “an absolute spectacle of filmmaking from start to
finish” (Lauren Huff, Entertainment Weekly) and “extravagant,
decadent…phenomenal” (Jazz Tangcay, Variety), writer/director Damien Chazelle’s
glittering tale of Hollywood glamour and excess BABYLON arrives for fans to
watch at home on Premium Video-On-Demand and to purchase on Digital January 31,
2023 from Paramount Home Entertainment.
Nominated for three Academy Awards®, including Best Original
Score, Best Production Design, and Best Costume Design, BABYLON is a must-see
spectacle featuring outstanding work from a world-class cast and filmmaking
team. Fans who buy the film on Digital will have access to over 40
minutes of behind-the-scenes interviews and deleted scenes to further
illuminate how the cinematic tour-de-force was brought to life. Bonus content
is detailed below:
•A Panoramic Canvas Called Babylon— The cast and
crew discuss the inspiration and motivation behind the original story and
development of this epic, 15 years in the making.•The Costumes of Babylon— Discover how costume
design was fundamental to character development and the challenges that went
into creating over 7,000 costumes for the film.•Scoring Babylon— Take a peek into Justin
Hurwitz's musical process to understand the artistry behind composing an iconic
score that further elevates the film.•Deleted & Extended Scenes
BABYLON follows an ambitious cast of characters -- The
Silent Film Superstar (Brad Pitt), the Young Starlet (Margot Robbie), the
Production Executive (Diego Calva), the Musical Sensation (Jovan Adepo) and the
Alluring Powerhouse Performer (Li Jun Li) -- who are striving to stay on top of
the raucous, 1920s Hollywood scene and maintain their relevance at a time when
the industry is moving on to the next best thing.
The film will arrive on 4K Ultra HD™, Blu-ray™, DVD, and in
a Limited-Edition 4K Ultra HD SteelBook® March 21, 2023.
1972 was a busy year
for the vice squad of the Metropolitan Police. Having only seized 140,000
obscene items from London’s sex shops the previous year, this time they managed
to grab over one million items, raiding sex shops, private cinemas and the
occasional warehouse. Obscenity generally meant pornography, and this could
take the guise of magazines, photos and films. This was the year when America
saw the release of Deep Throat
(Gerard Damiano), but there was no such porno
chic revolution in the UK. Hardcore pornography was illegal and produced secretly
on low budgets by daring, enterprising filmmakers whose work could land them in
jail, much like the American stag film producers of the 1930s and 1940s.
Britain had always been years behind, not only the States but Europe as well.
The early 1970s saw a boom in the production of pornography across the Western
world, with censorship laws either being relaxed or abolished in many
countries, something which the lawmakers and moral guardians of the UK watched
with great unease.
Despite its illegal
status there was still money to be made, and in this new book from academic
Benjamin Halligan we get some fascinating insight into the history of British
pornography and its connection to politics and the campaigning against it of
groups such as the Festival of Light. One filmmaker who seemed to have little
regard for the laws was the Scottish entrepreneur John Lindsay, who was known
for producing films frequently depicting schoolgirls or nuns. The films were
made for European distribution, but also found British customers through mail
order as well as being screened secretly in the sex cinemas of Soho.
As Halligan points
out in this fascinating study, as with many aspects of British culture, the
pornography of this time was often about class, with fantasies being played out
from sophisticated erotica in country houses and gentlemen’s clubs to
frustrated housewives and chambermaids encountering guests in their hotel rooms.
Individual filmmakers developed an almost auteur status in the industry and
became celebrities themselves, publishing autobiographies and documentaries on
the sex film industry. It wasn’t all just hardcore of course, with Britain’s
most famous sex film star Mary Millington moving away from hardcore to appear
in softcore sex comedies such as Come
Play With Me (George Harrison Marks, 1977), whose director was a true
pioneer in British glamour film and photography, producing dozens of books, 8mm
loops and feature films from the late 1950s.
Halligan has
uncovered a new canon of British filmmakers who for the most part have been
ignored in previous histories, who played an important role in this secretive,
frequently controversial world. He has watched hundreds of these “joyless
erotic films” which blurred into “one underlit and dingy tale of sexual
frustration… across housing estates, rainy holiday resorts and chintzy hotels”
as part of the research (being a historian is a tough job sometimes!) and as
such is able to give us a great overview of the films, their directors and
producers (generally those in front of the camera are uncredited and anonymous
so it is very difficult to identify who they might be). He explores the
difficulty the British government had in defining precisely what obscenity and
pornography were, which helped to create the grey areas that allowed those
involved to flourish despite the risks.
The book is divided
into three sections, exploring the notion of “The Permissive Society” and the
campaigners both for and against pornography and immoral behaviour, the
hardcore films of John Lindsay, George Harrison Marks and Russell Gay, and the
softcore (and therefore more commercially acceptable) worlds of Derek Ford and
David Hamilton Grant. As a coda, he explores the post-Thatcherite notions of
hardcore pornography, focusing on films set on council estates, which again
brings us back to class. In British film, as pointed out in the introduction
here, everything is really about class.
For anyone interested
in this occasionally murky aspect of British film industry, this is an
essential addition to a library which should also include the work of Simon Sheridan
and David McGillivray. As has been pointed out before, don’t let that high
price for the hardback put you off: this is an academic publication, which
means that a more affordable paperback should be along soon. If you can’t wait
that long, simply request a copy of Hotbeds
of Licentiousness from your local library. Perhaps they can supply it in a
plain brown wrapper.
In
May 1977 my parents and I saw George Lucas’s Star Wars and my life
changed forever. We saw it July with other family members and a third time in
November prior to the release of Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the
Third Kind (henceforth abbreviated as CE3K). The trailer
for CE3K was mysterious and intense to my young eyes and the prospect of
seeing it again led me to turn down my parent’s offer to sit through Star
Wars a second time after that afternoon’s showing. What frightened me about
the trailer was not the chaotic scenes with Richard Dreyfus and Melinda Dillon,
but rather the sequence wherein Bob Balaban and Francois Truffaut approach
Richard Dreyfuss in a claustrophobic makeshift room to interrogate him about
what he has seen, reminding me of my first trip to what I considered to be the
Ninth Circle of Hell: THE PRINCIPAL’S OFFICE. In retrospect, I am amused by
this memory and my initial impression of the film.
If
you look at the history of Steven Spielberg’s work, his films are about many
things, not the least of which is people’s impressions of the world around
them. Additionally, a common theme that runs throughout much of his work is the
notion of broken families or absent parents. Beginning with his film debut, The
Sugarland Express (1974), and continuing with the father who is not around
much for his young children in Jaws (1975), or a UFO-obsessed power
plant worker who leaves his family for other worlds in the aforementioned CE3K,
or a lonely young boy who feels a connection to an alien in E.T. The
Extra-Terrestrial (1982), or the broken family that needs to come together
to survive in War of the Worlds (2005), to name a few, authority figures
are often anything but authoritative. His latest film, the wonderful and semi-autobiographical
The Fabelmans, is a story that has existed in Mr. Spielberg’s mind all
his life and finally needed to come out during the height of the coronavirus
pandemic during worldwide downtime, if it was going to come out at all. Collaborating
with writer Tony Kushner for the fourth time, Mr. Spielberg gives the audience
a sense of what his turbulent childhood was like.
Although
Mr. Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, OH, his family moved around due to his
father’s position as an electrical engineer in the burgeoning computer industry.
In The Fabelmans, Burt Fabelman (Paul Dano standing in for real-life
father Arnold Spielberg) and Mitzi Fabelman (Michelle Williams standing in for
real-life mother Leah Adler) take their young son Sammy (Mateo Zoryan) to see his
first movie, Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth, in Haddon
Township, NJ in 1952. The spectacular train crash seen on screen both
captivates and frightens him. Using his father’s 8mm camera with his mother’s
secretive permission, he recreates it with his train set that he received for
Hanukkah, and this gives Sammy the confidence to start shooting films involving
friends and his three younger sisters.
Years
later, Sammy is much older and now portrayed by Gabriel LaBelle. His father is
offered a better job, and this takes them to Phoenix, AZ along with Burt’s
friend and business associate Benny Loewy (played endearingly by Seth Rogen). Sammy
shoots footage of them all on a camping trip, including a headlight-illuminated
dance performed by his mother in her nightgown, which makes a deep impression
on Benny. Following Mitzi’s mother’s passing and her subsequent sadness, Burt urges
Sammy to create a little film of the camping trip to cheer her up, which he
does begrudgingly while he is shooting a film with his fellow Boy Scouts. In
the film’s most inspired moment, the family’s Uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch in a
wonderful performance) briefly visits, giving Sammy a spirited monologue about the
discord between art and familial responsibility. The turning point in the film
comes when Sammy sorts through the campfire footage, only to discover that
“Uncle” Benny is showing more than a passing interest in Mitzi: they are caught
holding hands and getting too close for comfort in the background images. Sammy
is shellshocked. After more strife, the family is uprooted yet again, this time
to Southern California, where he encounters both severe antisemitism at the
hands of two school bullies and experiences first love with a devoutly Christian
girl who puts Jesus first. More turmoil ensues, and Sammy ultimately learns to
use his natural gift for filmmaking to deal with personal traumas and bending
others to his will.
Steven
Spielberg is my favorite director, and he shares the number one spot for me in
a tie with Stanley Kubrick. Both men have made extraordinarily entertaining and
mind-bending films. It was a constant joy to watch The Fablemans as it
gives the audience a window into the person who would go on to become the
creative genius who not only makes great movies but is also and deservedly
financially successful at it.
I
met Leah Adler in November 2008 when I was getting ready to come home from a
horror film convention. She owned a restaurant called Milky
Way, which opened in
1977, and when I walked in, she was there to greet me. I began gushing about
her son, how CE3K was the first film of his that I saw and how it blew
me away, what Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T. meant to me, etc.
She guided me over to a table and listened intently to my rambling, and when I
thanked her for encouraging Steven to become a filmmaker, she paused and simply
said, “I don’t know where the hell he came from.” This made me burst out
laughing as I have always thought of her son as the best friend I never met
(not entirely true: I waited outside the Ziegfeld Theater in June 2005 for
eight hours the day of the War of the Worlds premiere and managed to get
his autograph and snap a few photos of him). If he and I grew up together, we
would have been inseparable – watching movies, talking about movies, making
movies, you name it. My own parents were not movie fanatics by any means, and
they could just as easily have said the same thing about me! The few times that
my family went on vacation, I was enlisted to shoot the home movies. When I was
fourteen on vacation in Florida, I began shooting our home movies from a
cinematic perspective. This is due to Steven Spielberg.
Todd Garbarini with Leah Adler, November, 2008. (Photo: Todd Garbarini).
The
new 4K UHD Blu-ray and standard Blu-ray combo is now available from Valentine’s
Day, appropriate as this film is a Valentine to Mr. Spielberg’s parents. It
comes with some extras, and I had my fingers crossed that the director would
have provided an audio commentary (something that he flatly refuses to do as he
wants his films to speak for themselves and feels that it’s a way to lifting a
curtain behind the magic), however he has stuck to his guns and I must respect
his decision. It does feature some nice extras:
The
first piece is called The Fabelmans: A Personal Journey and runs 11:00.
It focuses on comments by producer Kristie Macosko Kriger, who is on board with
the director for the ninth time; co-writer Tony Kushner, and how the film came
about, the product of a conversation while the director was shooting Munich
in Malta in 2005.
The
second piece is named Family Dynamics and runs 15:28. Much of the cast
of the film discusses their feelings and interpretations of the real-life
people they portray in the film.
The
third and final extra is called Crafting the World of The Fabelmans and
runs 22:04. This is a bit more in-depth with input from Production Designer
Rick Carter; Costume Designer Mark Bridges; Directory of Photography Januz
Kaminski; Property Master Andrew M. Siegel; Editors Michael Khan (on his 30th
film with the director) and Sarah Broshar; Actress Chloe East; Actors Sam
Rechner and Oakes Fegley; and Maestro/Composer John Williams.
The set also includes a digital version for streaming.
While
the film is a no-brainer for Spielberg completists, being one is not a
prerequisite as it can be enjoyed as a work of fiction for those who do not
idolize the subject of the film.
The
Fabelmans is an example of
life not only imitating art, but art imitating life as well.
One
of the most talked-about and popular films of 1968 was Franco Zeffirelli’s
adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Audiences in the
UK were treated to the film early in the year (March), but the release date in
the USA was held back to October. By then, the picture was a worldwide phenomenon.
Nino Rota’s theme song (known in various markets as “Love Theme from Romeo
and Juliet,” “A Time for Us,” and “What is a Youth?”) had been covered by
numerous musical artists and was already a standard on the radio and other
media.
A
British-Italian co-production, the picture’s creative team consisted of mostly
Italians, while the production/financing and actors hailed largely from Britain
(with some Italian actors being dubbed into English). Director Zeffirelli had
already enjoyed some success with his earlier Shakespearean adaptation, The
Taming of the Shrew (1967, with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton). It
made box-office sense for the filmmaker to go a step further and bring more
Shakespeare to the masses.
Zeffirelli
made a canny decision to cast two young actors who were the same ages of the
characters in the play. Productions of Romeo and Juliet in the past had
always cast actors who were well into their thirties and beyond (the most
notable being the 1936 George Cukor-helmed picture featuring Leslie Howard and
Norma Shearer). Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey were 16 and 15, respectively,
when they were cast, and 17 and 16 during filming. Not only were the two stars
extremely attractive and likable, they were also competent and charismatic
performers as well.
The
film captured the zeitgeist of 1968—an era of youth rebellion, “free love,” and
pushing the envelope in the arts. There was much ado of how Zeffirelli and his
co-screenwriters (Franco Brusati and Masolino D’Amico) cut massive portions
from Shakespeare’s text in order to release a movie that ran a little over two
hours (and with an intermission, too, to mimic the experience of a stage play).
Schools in America organized field trips to see the film, because for once,
Shakespeare had been made “commercial.” Some markets, however, made cuts in the
film to eliminate the brief nudity in the bedroom scene. This reviewer recalls
that in West Texas, two different versions of the film played. The picture was
released prior to the creation of the movie ratings system in America, but by
the time it ran in West Texas, the ratings were in effect. The cinema where Romeo
and Juliet was shown in late 1968 or early 1969 arbitrarily exhibited a
censored “M” (for Mature Audiences) rated version during matinees, and an “R”
(for Restricted Audiences) version in the evenings. All this seems rather silly
in retrospect, because the film is, at worst, a “PG” in today’s rating
sensibilities.
Filmed
on location in Italy, the movie is gorgeous to look at (with Oscar winning
cinematography and costumes by Pasqualino De Santis and Danilo Donati,
respectively). As mentioned previously, the now classic score by Nino Rota had
a great deal to do with the movie’s success. One must give Zeffirelli his due,
though (he was nominated for Best Director but didn’t win). His direction of
the film is superb, not only in guiding his two young stars into intense,
utterly believable performances, but especially in the street brawls and sword fighting
scenes. The sequence in which Romeo and Tybalt (Michael York) have at it is
appropriately awkward, messy, and realistically choreographed.
The
Criterion Collection has released a lovely Blu-ray disk (the first time in the
USA and UK for a Blu-ray, although the film has been available on a Paramount DVD
for years). The 4K digital restoration, with an uncompressed monaural
soundtrack, looks magnificent with its expected 1960s-era film stock
appearance. Supplements include an excerpt from a 2018 documentary on
Zeffirelli, and interviews with stars Whiting and Hussey from 1967 after
filming was complete and in 2016 at a retrospective screening.
Whiting
and Hussey have recently made the news by filing a lawsuit against the studio for
allegedly being pushed by Zeffirelli (now deceased) into doing the brief nudity.
Interestingly, in the 2016 interview on the disk, they joke about the bedroom
scene as “being fun” and there are interviews with the couple in recent years in
which they defend the nude scenes as appropriate to the material. It will be
interesting to see how this all plays out in the legal proceedings.
Regardless,
Criterion’s release of Romeo and Juliet on Blu-ray is a landmark
presentation of a classic, beloved motion picture. It is perhaps the definitive
adaptation of Shakespeare’s play on film, and the disk is highly recommended
for fans of the Bard, the play itself, Nino Rota’s music, Zeffirelli, and the
two stars who light up the screen. As Romeo says of Juliet, “O, she doth teach
the torches to burn bright.” They both do.
By Darren Allison, Cinema Retro Soundtracks Editor
I always tend to get excited upon the arrival
of a couple of new releases from Chris' Soundtrack Corner. They’ve been doing
it a long while now, and they have found a seemingly smooth and reliable sense
of confident continuity with every subsequent title. Their commitment to the
works of composer Stelvio Cipriani has been a journey of discovery which
continues with CSC’s two latest releases.
Peccato Senza Malizia (aka Sins Without
Intentions, 1975) (CSC 038) certainly brings out the subtly romantic elements
of Cipriani’s craft. Theo Campanelli’s film is the story of Stefania (Luciana
Tamburini), an 18 year-old girl who leaves her orphanage in Ascoli Piceno to
move in with her stepfather, a humble and simplistic fisherman. Seeing the girl
as a wife and a lover rather than a daughter, the unnamed stepfather (Luigi
Pistelli) (who had minor roles in Leone’s, For A Few Dollars More and The Good,
the Bad and the Ugly) ignites an abusive relationship until Stefania escapes
into a series of equally bad situations. Produced in Italy, the film falls into
the general realm of erotica and remains widely unseen by a great deal of
mainstream audiences.
When the movie was released, an inventive
marketing campaign was launched to promote its arrival; foreign promotional campaigns
played upon the film’s sexuality, focusing on the single (and comparatively
tame) shower sequence in a series of lobby cards and posters. Unfortunately,
Peccato Senza Malizia has all but disappeared from the public eye. The film
never gained any form of cult status and remained largely ignored by home video
labels. It was director Theo Campanelli's only film, and as such, it simply
became just another Italian film with the Cipriani score providing more
interest than the movie itself.
It’s an old and familiar tale, but one that
at least offers a form of longevity and respectability towards the composer's
work. Stelvio Cipriani’s score is light, breezy and charming, and weaves its
way delicately via the ‘variations of a theme’ approach. Cipriani was well
versed in this romantic, playful style of scoring, and it still works well some
50 years on. Cipriani’s composition makes good use of smokey saxophones, loungy
sounding piano, trumpets and foreboding harpsichord. Peccato Senza Malizia
tries to achieve parallels between Cipriani music and the paintings presented
on screen and featured within the film. His score relies upon two basic themes,
with its first half building almost all of its cues around the main theme with
a strong focus on Stefania's character. Here, Cipriani uses his array of
orchestral tricks to showcase the emotional rollercoaster of the main heroine.
When Stefania hooks up with her inspiring music teacher, Maurizio, a trumpet is
used to suggest his masculine swagger; as their relationship blossoms, Cipriani
introduces his love theme. This motif draws upon Stefania's innocence to
showcase the transformative power of their romance.
Chris' Soundtrack Corner has worked wonders
in making this a really credible listen as well as making the score available
at all. This CD marks the soundtrack’s worldwide debut. Given the fact that the
first half of the movie is on the more monothematic side, CSC has opted to
create a better listening experience by either merging shorter cues together or
by simply changing the order of the cues. Peccato Senza Malizia is arguably the
label’s most obscure movie soundtrack it has ever released, but it's well worth
picking up, especially as a virtually forgotten Cipriani gem. The album is
produced beautifully as always by Christian Riedrich and mastered by Manmade
Mastering. The packaging is again impressive for such a minor film title and
consists of an 8-page illustrated booklet designed by Tobias Kohlhaas and
featuring exclusive and detailed notes by Gergely Hubai, who explores the
making of the film and its score. An excellent release which I hope is
rightfully rewarded.
For their second Stelvio Cipriani score
Chris' Soundtrack Corner turned to the ‘Comisario Mendoza’ trilogy from Spanish
filmmaker José Antonio de la Loma. El último viaje (1974)(CSC 039) was the second film in the trilogy
and featured Eduardo Fajardo as Mendoza.
El último viaje has been described as the
sleaziest instalment with the drug plot inviting casual orgies and a fair share
of topless women. Whether it's an urban crime thriller, a drug bust movie, or a
cross-country manhunt, Comisario Mendoza is always hot on the trail of the
criminals even if his screen time varied greatly from mission to mission.
Stelvio Cipriani's musical legacy with the
Comisario Mendoza movies is as convoluted as the constant recasting of the
trilogy's central hero. Whilst the first two movies were scored by Cipriani,
the third movie used pre-existing compositions from the C.A.M. archives. The
film also used tracks from other composers, but overall the majority of
compositions were previously written by Cipriani (these soundtracks are also
available from Chris' Soundtrack Corner). El último viaje's score is largely
based around two themes, each representing a different aspect of gangster life.
The key idea for the central love theme is deception, as the film spends a good
portion of its running time highlighting the fake criminal lifestyle.
Interestingly, a recurring feature of Cipriani's score is that it provides some
self-contained, almost isolated cues for certain sequences that seemingly
separate themselves from the film’s general narrative style, and as a result,
seem unrelated to the overall theme of the score. This is more prominent
towards the middle section of the movie where the score suddenly throws a
couple of unrelated tracks into the mix, one being for a drug-fueled orgy
sequence. Here Cipriani provides music for bass guitar, flutes, and percussion
and is only interrupted by a sudden burst of violence when somebody is dragged
out towards a clifftop. Whilst such sequences proved to be challenging for the
composer, Cipriani resolves and fulfils the tasks admirably.
Rather curiously, no soundtrack album was
ever issued for this beautiful and immersive score, so Chris' Soundtrack Corner
is particularly proud to present a world premiere release of the full
soundtrack. With his usual sense of artistic flair, Cipriani provides a
memorable and rich 45 minutes of music and also contains a couple of bonus
tracks.The album is again impressively produced by Christian Riedrich and
mastered by Manmade Mastering. The CD packaging consists of a 12-page
illustrated booklet designed by Tobias Kohlhaas and featuring exclusive notes
by Gergely Hubai, who explores the making of the film and its score in detail.
Chris' Soundtrack Corner have again chosen wisely and intelligently and we can
only hope that their Cipriani quest continues to blossom.
RETRO-ACTIVE: THE BEST FROM THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVES.
By Lee Pfeiffer
MGM has made available a region-free DVD of the Oakmont-produced British WWII films from the late 1960s-early 1970s. These modestly-budgeted films were not designed as Oscar-bait. In fact, they seem to be specifically created to fill out the bottom of double bills as the era of that great cinema staple was rapidly coming to a close. Hell Boats was shot in 1970 and bares all the ingredients of an Oakmont production: it's intelligently written, well-acted and directed (by Paul Wendkos) and features some exotic locations, in this case Malta. As with some other Oakmont titles (The Last Escape, Attack on the Iron Coast, The Thousand Plane Raid), this rather unconvincingly shoehorns an American leading man into what is clearly an all-British story line, presumably to give the film some broader boxoffice appeal. In this case, James Franciscus (in full, Chuck Heston clone mode) is Jeffords, the new commander of a British torpedo boat unit. There is a brief explanation as to how an American got a job as Commander in the Royal Navy- something to do with having been born in the UK. With that sore point quickly dispensed of, we get to the main plot line. Jeffords is assigned to blow up a seemingly impregnable German gun bastion carved into a mountainside in Malta. The mission appears suicidal but Jeffords concocts a daring plan that involves scuba divers, commandos and the torpedo boats. He does have other distractions: he and his superior officer, Ashurst (Ronald Allen) despise each other. Ashurst wants to prove himself in combat, but is stuck behind a desk. He envies Jefford's courage and is further emasculated by his knowledge that Jeffords is bedding his frustrated wife Alison (Elizabeth Shepherd), who fortunately has an aversion to clothing. The soap opera elements are actually intelligently woven into the story line, creating genuine tension between the two men. Franciscus is all grit-teethed masculinity, but he makes a rather bland hero. He is humorless and all business, all the time. (He even makes his sexual dalliances look about as desirable as changing a tire.) Allen's character is far more interesting and the dissolution of his marriage before his eyes adds an interesting subplot to the military sequences.
Like most Oakmont productions, Hell Boats does a lot with very little in terms of budget. The photography is excellent and so are the production values, save for the sea battle sequences that betray the very obvious use of miniatures. Nevertheless, this is a highly entertaining adventure movie throughout- and it refreshingly sidesteps what I thought was going to be a predictable plot device leading to a somewhat unexpected conclusion.
If MGM is listening, the only Oakmont title not available on DVD is The Last Escape starring Stuart Whitman. C'mon guys, keep up the good work and get this one out there.
Click here to order from Amazon (The film is currently streaming on Screenpix and Paramount +)
Edgar
Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan first appeared in the October 1912 issue of the pulp
fiction magazine “All-Story.”
This inaugural novel, “Tarzan of the Apes,”
introduced the character as a British peer, Lord Greystoke, who was reared by
great apes in Africa as an orphaned infant, and then assimilated into European
society in adulthood as a sophisticated adventurer and conservationist.
Burroughs was ingenious in working out the details of the premise (for example,
how Tarzan taught himself to read and write), which bordered on science-fiction
even by the standards of 1912.
The
story was immediately popular, and a hardcover edition followed in 1914.
It’s important to term the character “Edgar Rice Burroughs’
Tarzan,” as he was typically labelled in media credits, because the author
shrewdly trademarked the name. That way, he could control all uses of his
creation, reap the profits, and legally stop any attempts by others to hijack
it. As Burroughs realized, the birth of the motion picture industry and
the growth of newspaper syndication in the early 1900s offered access to
unlimited audiences. Many middle-class people in small towns might never
buy a magazine or a book, but they were sure to be movie-goers and newspaper
readers. Securing Tarzan as his Intellectual Property allowed Burroughs
to exploit those opportunities and ensure they didn’t fall into the hands of
others. He incorporated himself as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., and wrote
twenty-two more Tarzan novels over the next thirty-five years, along with many
other science-fiction and adventure series. Burroughs—and then after his
death in 1950, his heirs—licensed Tarzan to numerous other media platforms,
including movies, radio, a newspaper comic strip, comic books, toys, and
television. If podcasts, Twitter, YouTube, virtual reality, video games,
and streaming video had existed back then, we can be certain he would have
utilised them too. Today, when we think of creators who wisely kept a
tight commercial grip on their creations, Walt Disney and George Lucas are likely
to come to mind, but Burroughs led the way.
Over
the years, movies’ portrayals of Tarzan have varied from the wily, masculine,
powerful, articulate, principled character of Burroughs’ original vision to a
muscular but asexual simpleton with the verbal skills of a two-year-old.
The latter version was popularised for one generation by MGM’s Johnny
Weissmuller movies in the 1940s, and reinforced for the next by years of reruns
on television. The Weissmuller films began promisingly with the violent,
sexy “Tarzan the Ape Man”
in 1932 and “Tarzan and His Mate”
in 1934, but over time at MGM (and then at RKO, where the series moved in
1943), they became increasingly simplistic. Under the fierce censorship
of Hollywood’s Production Code, MGM tightened down on the semi-nudity and
mayhem of the first two films, aiming instead for a juvenile demographic.
The studio reasoned that kids were an easier audience who would laugh at the
antics of Tarzan’s chimpanzee and not wonder why Weissmuller’s Tarzan never had
intimate relations with Jane.
The
last seven decades have seen a variety of Tarzans. Some producers adhered
to the Weissmuller model, beginning with five features from RKO starring Lex
Barker, who inherited the role after Weissmuller retired his loincloth.
Others redesigned the concept to meet changing trends in society. In the
James Bond era of the 1960s, a character closer to the Burroughs prototype
appeared in two features starring Jock Mahoney and three with Mike Henry.
This peer of the jungle realm was a suave, jet-setting trouble shooter.
The image of an articulate ape man carried over to a 1966-68 NBC-TV series with
Ron Ely in the role. Where Mahoney’s and Henry’s character travelled to
India, Thailand, Mexico, and South America to solve jungle crises, Ely’s
remained in Africa, in one episode coming to the aid of three nuns from America
played by Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, and Cindy Birdsong, better known as the
Supremes. Even with those attempts to appeal to a more contemporary
audience, popular interest waned. In part, this was because the
Weissmuller image was the one that stuck in the popular memory, lampooned by
television comics. What can you do with a hero once your audience laughs
at him? Even more to the point, enormous cultural changes around racial
issues occurred with the advancements of the Civil Rights era. Many
critics now saw Tarzan as a worrisome symbol of white entitlement, despite the
prominent casting of Black actors and a more nuanced portrayal of African
tribal societies in the Ron Ely series.
Nevertheless,
with a brand name that older viewers still recognised at least, the character
continued to appear sporadically. If you gathered around the VCR with
your family as a kid in the Reagan years, the Tarzan you may remember best was
Christopher Lambert’s portrayal in 1984’s “Greystoke: The Legend
of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes.” “Greystoke” had the good fortune to appear
as VCRs became standard fixtures in American television rooms; on home video,
the movie enjoyed a long life as a VHS rental. Adapted by Robert Towne
from “Tarzan of the Apes”
and directed by Hugh Hudson, the film was promoted as a return to Burroughs’ concept
of a feral but innately intelligent man who attempts to blend back into polite
society. Some Burroughs fans, primed to embrace a virile Tarzan close to
the commanding pulp-fiction character, were disappointed. In trying to
rectify the prevailing Weissmuller image from decades past, Towne and Hudson
may have overbalanced in the opposite direction. Burroughs’ Tarzan
dominated whatever environment he chose to be in; Lambert’s was a sad figure,
overwhelmed and lost,once he left the jungle. Nevertheless, lavishly
produced, the movie was popular with critics and general audiences. There
were Academy Award nominations for Towne’s screenplay and for Rick Baker’s
costuming effects for Tarzan’s adopted ape family. Another live action
movie (“Tarzan and the Lost
City,” 1998), two short-lived, syndicated TV series, and Disney’s animated “Tarzan” (1999) were released through the
1990s.
The
latest iteration as a live-action feature, “The Legend of Tarzan”
(2016), drew tepid reviews and disappointing box-office. Although the
producers cast Samuel L. Jackson in a prominent role alongside Alexander
Skarsgard’s Tarzan above the title, the strategy probably did little to attract
younger, hipper, and more diverse ticket-buyers as it was intended to. Jackson’s
American envoy remained little more than a sidekick to Tarzan in an 1885 period
setting. If you hoped to see Jackson’s character shove Tarzan aside to
get medieval on somebody’s ass, you were disappointed. In contrast,
Marvel Studios’ “Black Panther,” with a modern Black jungle hero, a largely
Black supporting cast and production team, and James Bond-style action
situations, emerged two years later with a whopping $1.3 billion in ticket
sales and a place on many critics’ Top Ten lists. The 2022 sequel, “Black
Panther: Wakanda Forever,” performed nearly as well with an $838.1 million
return.On a $50 million budget, another
2022 Hollywood production with a prestigious Black cast and exotic action in
the Burroughs style, “The Woman King,” nearly doubled its investment with $94.3
million in revenue.
In
late 2022, Sony Pictures acquired the latest screen rights to Tarzan and
promised a “total reinvention” of the character.What the studio has in mind, and whether it
will actually follow through, appears to be up in the air right now.Would anybody be surprised to see Tarzan
“reinvented” as a role for a Black actor the next time out, if there is a next
time? Popular culture is already there.Vintage movies (“A League of Their Own”) and TV series (“SWAT”) once
cast primarily with white actors are remade now, routinely, with Black stars or
all-Black casts.On the hit Netflix
series “Bridgerton,” actors
of color portray British aristocrats in Jane Austen’s Regency-era England, in
reality one of the whitest of white societies ever.
As
we wait to see what the next Tarzan, if any, will look like, The Film Detective
has released “The Tarzan Vault
Collection,” a three-disc Blu-ray set that includes the first Tarzan movie, “Tarzan of the Apes” (1918); “Adventures of Tarzan” (1921), a re-edited
feature version of a 10-chapter serial; and “The New Adventures of
Tarzan” (1935), a 12-chapter serial presented in its entirety. The first
two pictures starred Elmo Lincoln, a stocky actor who had appeared in several
of D.W. Griffith’s milestone silent films, including the ambitious “Intolerance” (1916) as a Biblical strongman, “the Mighty Man of Valor.” Although it’s
said Burroughs wasn’t particularly fond of Lincoln’s casting after another
actor was chosen but had to bow out, the films were relatively faithful to the
source novels. Outdoor filming locations in Louisiana for “Tarzan of the Apes” stand in acceptably for
equatorial Africa, at least to the satisfaction of moviegoers in 1918 who had
no idea what Africa really looked like, and certainly better than the studio
backlots used in the Weissmuller films. Actors in shaggy anthropoid
costumes portrayed Tarzan’s ape friends. Although primitive in comparison
with the modern CGI in “The Legend of
Tarzan,” the makeup effects aren’t bad for that early era of cinema.
“Adventures of
Tarzan,” based on Burroughs’ “The Return of Tarzan” (1913), finds Tarzan in
pursuit of a villain named Rokoff, who has kidnapped Jane in a plot to find the
treasure vaults of the lost city of Opar (an idea later reiterated in “The Legend of Tarzan”). In “The Return of Tarzan” and subsequent novels,
Tarzan blithely removes gold and jewels from Burroughs’ imaginary Opar to help
support his African estate, reasoning that otherwise the treasure would just
lie there. In the books, the underground vaults are vast, cavernous, and
sinister. In the movie, where the 1921 budget was too low to keep up with
Burroughs’ staggering imagination, they look more like somebody’s root
cellar. Good try anyway. As an hour-long feature truncated from a
much longer serial version, “Adventures of Tarzan”
is a succession of chases, rescues, and fights from the final chapters of the
serial. A title card at the beginning brings the viewer up to speed on
the action already in progress, much as the “Star Wars” movies do
now.
It
may be confusing to watch an old serial after most of its continuity has been
removed, but the third movie in the Film Detective set, “The New Adventures of
Tarzan,” represents the other side of the coin as a serial presented in its
original, multi-chapter format. The serials were designed to be taken one
chapter at a time each week. That remains the best way to experience
one. Otherwise, watched in a binge, repetition becomes a problem.
It’s difficult to work up much concern when Tarzan falls into a
crocodile-infested river in Chapter Seven, if, an hour earlier, he’d already
escaped the same danger in Chapter Three. Still, taken piecemeal or in
one long sitting, fans will be happy for the chance to see this original
version of “The New Adventures of
Tarzan,” which is better known in its truncated feature version, “Tarzan and the Green Goddess,” a one-time
television staple. Co-produced by Burroughs, it introduced Herman Brix, a
1928 Olympics finalist, as the title hero. Trimly muscular, Brix was
offered as an alternative to Johnny Weissmuller’s monosyllabic Tarzan; his
version, endorsed by Burroughs, spoke in whole, commanding sentences and looked
equally comfortable in a loincloth or a dinner jacket. The serial was set
and filmed on location in Guatemala, where Tarzan and his friends race against
the bad guys to find a Mayan statue with a valuable secret. Fans often
rank Brix with Jock Mahoney and Mike Henry as their favourite Tarzan. He
later changed his screen name to Bruce Bennett for a long career in Westerns
and crime dramas. Humphrey Bogart fans will remember him as Cody, the
drifter who tries to steal Fred C. Dobbs’ gold mine claim in “The Treasure of Sierra Madre.”
The
back story of the serial is more intriguing than the plot about the Mayan
statue. Burroughs fell in love with the wife of his co-producer, Ashton
Dearholt, eventually marrying her after she divorced Dearholt and Burroughs
divorced his first wife. In turn, Dearholt had carried on an extramarital
affair with Ula Holt, the lead actress in the serial, and they married after
Dearholt’s divorce. It’s the kind of Hollywood story that TMZ.com would
love today.
In 1975 film director Sam Peckinpah was at loose ends.
His last film, “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia,” while an artistic triumph
of a certain kind, was a box office failure. He had a script for a movie called
“The Insurance Company,” but couldn’t get any backing for it. When United
Artists offered him a chance to direct a movie based on Robert Rostand’s novel,
“Monkey in the Middle,” he took it. The book was a thriller about security
expert Mike Locken, hired to protect an African diplomat traveling through London.
He takes the job because one of three elite assassins hired to kill the
diplomat was a former colleague who had shot him up on his last job and left
him for dead. The new assignment was a way to get revenge.
Peckinpah saw some elements in the story that he felt he
could work with. But when UA offered the Mike Locken role to James Caan, he
said he didn’t want to work in Europe, where he’d been working the last several
years. He’d do it, if they changed the location to the U.S. Marc Norman rewrote
the script that Reginald Rose had written based on the novel, but UA and
Peckinpah hated it.Top notch
screenwriter, Oscar winner Stirling Silliphant (“In the Heat of the Night”) was
hired to do a new script. Silliphant, only married a year to Tiana, his 33-years
younger Vietnamese actress wife, said he’d do the script but only if they
agreed to put her in the picture as Locken’s love interest. Peckinpah tested
her and gave the part.
Tiana and Silliphant were both former students of Bruce
Lee and Silliphant had always had an interest in Asian culture and philosophy. So
he set the story in San Francisco, using Chinatown, the Golden Gate Bridge and
other locations, and brought aboard kung fu and martial arts experts like the
legendary Tai Chi master Kuo Lien Ying to play some of the background
characters. He created a fictitious security agency named ComTeg, and changed
the character of the African diplomat to a Taiwanese politician named Chung
(Mako), who was traveling with his daughter Tommy (Tiana). Robert Duvall was
brought on board to play George Hansen, Locken’s best buddy, who in the movie’s
first act, succumbed to a better offer from the opposition on a previous
assignment, and shot Locken in the knee and elbow, “retiring” him from active
service. The first 40 minutes of “The Killer Elite” consists mostly of Hansen’s
betrayal and Locken’s rehabilitation, rendered in excruciating detail. He
learns to use a metal elbow brace and wooden cane as martial arts weapons.
Locken’s bosses at ComTeg, Cap Collis (Arthur Hill), and
Lawrence Weybourne (Gig Young), tell him he has to retire with disability.
“Let’s face it,” Collis says. “That knee of yours will never be anything but a
wet noodle.” When the CIA contracts ComTeg to provide security for Chung and
his daughter while they’re in the U.S., they’re not interested until they learn
that Hansen is heading up a team to eliminate Chung. Collis and Weybourne offer
Locken his old job back—the chance for revenge that Mike has been waiting for.
Locken gets in touch with two members of his old team for
two or three days of work. “I don’t think anyone could handle more of what we
got.” He meets up with Jerome Miller (Bo Hopkins) on a hillside overlooking the
Golden Gate Bridge, where he’s practicing his skeet shooting, which is probably
not something that happens there every day. Miller tells him he doesn’t think
his company would hire him. “They’ve got me classified as a psycho.” Locken
tells him: “You’re not a psycho, Jerome. You’re the patron poet of the manic
depressives.” A typical Silliphant line.
Next up is Mac (Burt Young), his old driver, who now runs
a garage, where he just happens to have a bullet proof taxi available that
would be just perfect for the job Locken has in mind. Mac’s wife calls Locken
Mr. Davis. When Locken asks why, Mac says: “When you’re around, she calls
everybody Mr. Davis.” They don’t know it, but while everybody’s getting
reacquainted, a mechanic has attached a bomb to the exhaust manifold.
The trio drive to San Francisco’s Chinatown to pick up
Chung and his daughter. Naturally there’s a gun battle with Hansen and another
gunman perched on the roof of the building across the street from the place
where Chung is staying. They manage to shoot their way out, but Mac hears
something rattling under the taxi. It’s bomb disposal time. They pull over on
an overpass and get some assistance from a dim-witted motorcycle cop— another
scene that is as unrealistic and impossible as the scene with Jerome skeet
shooting out in the open by the Golden Gate Bridge.
At this point you begin to suspect there’s something
weird going on. This is not your typical action thriller being played out here.
As the story moves on absurdity piles on absurdity, all of which culminates in
an unlikely battle between assassins equipped with automatic weapons and a team
of ghost-like ninjas armed with swords, aboard the deck of an abandoned
battleship, part of the Navy’s Mothball Fleet anchored in Suisan Bay. Got all
that?
Critic Pauline Kael in a 1976 review for The New Yorker
described Peckinpah’s career as a constant battle with studio bosses who
consistently tried to take the movies he made away from him, demanding changes
more in line with their thinking rather than his. As a result he kept making
movies that are more about that battle than any melodramatic plot that may be
involved. “There’s no way to make sense of what has been going on in
Peckinpah’s recent films,” she wrote, “if one looks only at their surface
stories. Whether consciously or, as I think, part unconsciously, he’s been
destroying the surface content.” According to Kael, “He’s crowing in The
Killer Elite, saying, ‘No matter what you do to me, look at the way I can make
a movie.’”
She attributes most of the film’s weirdness to Peckinpah,
but it might also be instructive to look at the career of screenwriter Stirling
Silliphant for some clues about the subtext both he and Peckinpah present in
The Killer Elite.Like Peckinpah,
Silliphant started out working in television. Peckinpah wrote episodes of “Gunsmoke,”
and created “The Rifleman” and “The Westerner” series. Silliphant wrote for
just about every TV series on the air in the mid-fifties, eventually writing 70
hour-long episodes of the classic Route 66 series, before moving to the movies.
He left television because of the same problem Peckinpah faced in filmmaking—loss
of creative control. He went on to achieve great success in films but when he wrote
the script for The Killer Elite, it was a year after having penned The Towering
Inferno. It was a successful, well-written movie but he probably realized he
had sold out his artistic independence when the hopped on the IrwinAllen Disaster Movie bandwagon, which he began
with The Poseidon Adventure. It would be only a few years after “The Killer
Elite” that he would nearly destroy his career turning out the script for Allen’s
“The Swarm.”
For relief between projects, he would take Tiana aboard his
yacht, the Tiana 2, and sail to exotic ports in the South Pacific. It’s no
coincidence, I think, that “The Killer Elite” ends with Locken turning down a
job offer and a promotion from his old boss Weybourne, and sails away on a
sailboat with his pal Mac (Miller is killed in the gunfight on the Mothball
Fleet). When Silliphant saw no future for him if he remained in what he
publicly called “the eel pit” that was Hollywood he sold everything and moved
to Thailand.
Peckinpah held similar sentiments about the Hollywood
establishment. He said in a 1972 Playboy interview: “The woods are full of
killers, all sizes, all colors. … A director has to deal with a whole world
absolutely teeming with mediocrities, jackals, hangers-on, and just plain
killers. The attrition is terrific. It can kill you. The saying is that they
can kill you but not eat you. That’s nonsense. I’ve had them eating on me while
I was still walking around.” I think he identified with Silliphant’s image of a
hero sailing away from it all if he could.
Imprint’s two-disc box set is a must have for any
Peckinpah fan or anyone who digs action thrillers, Silliphant, martial arts, or
the poetry of manic depression. The first disc presents the “original”
theatrical version in a 1080p high definition transfer from MGM that runs 2 hours
and 3 minutes, and includes a ton of bonus features, most notable of which is a
fabulous audio commentary by Peckinpah expert Mike Siegel. He provides some terrific
revelations about the film and its production and shows a real appreciation of
Peckinpah’s work. Siegel indicates that Sam, at Bo Hopkins’ suggestion, filmed
an alternate “absurdist” ending in which Locken and Mac find Miller alive and
well aboard the sailboat, after having been seen getting shot to pieces. In an
interview with Siegel, Hopkins confirms that bit of info, and even shows some
footage of the scene that was finally excised by the bosses at United Artists,
who just didn’t get it. In a separate commentary ported over from a previous
Twilight Time release, Garner Simmons and Paul Seydor, two film historians whom
I lovingly refer to as the Peckinpah Peckerwoods, and the late Nick Redman,
make the assertion that the complete film, with the Jerome Miller
“resurrection” scene had one showing in Northern California and has never been
seen again.
Well, I beg to differ with that statement. Fellow Cinema
Retro reviewer Fred Blosser and I saw The Killer Elite the night it opened in
December 19, 1975 at a local theater in northern Virginia. The scene in
question was definitely included. Fred states that he has also seen it in the
occasional TV broadcast of the film. So, despite statements made to the
contrary, there probably is at least one copy of the unexpurgated “The Killer
Elite” out there somewhere. JEROME MILLER LIVES!
Other extras included in the Imprint release include an
alternate, shorter version of the film that mainly cuts scenes from Locken’s
painful looking rehab; documentaries taken from Siegel’s The Passion and the
Poetry Project on the works of Sam Peckinpah; interviews Siegel conducted with
Bo Hopkins, Ernest Borgnine, LQ Jones and others. There is so much here to
enjoy. The bad news is that Imprint has sold out of the 1500 copies it made. I
obtained one the last two copies Grindhouse Video had left, but now they are
sold out. Good luck trying to find a copy. Check your usual sources. (Note: as of this writing, there are still a few copies left at
Amazon USA. Although it is listed as a Region 2 set, it is actually
region-free. Click here to order. Good luck!)
Poor
Orson Welles. After the critical success but box office failure that was Citizen
Kane (1941), it seemed as though the “boy genius” could never again get his
ultimate vision on the screen when he was working in Hollywood. The studio
butchered his second picture, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), although
the version released is still pretty much a masterpiece and earned an Oscar
Best Picture nomination. Still, it didn’t make money. After that, Welles was persona
non grata in Hollywood, at least as a director. The studios were happy to
have him as an actor.
Nevertheless,
he continued to squeeze his way in and make more Hollywood pictures. He
produced, co-wrote, and acted in Journey Into Fear (1943), and the story
goes that he directed some of it uncredited (Norman Foster was the credited
director). Welles then made The Stranger (1946) as an attempt to prove
he could deliver a movie under budget and on time—and he did. The Stranger is
perhaps Welles’ most “conventional” motion picture and it made money.
Unfortunately, RKO (the studio that had made his previous three films) still
turned its back on Welles.
The
filmmaker’s next title, The Lady from Shanghai (1947), was made for
Columbia Pictures. Legend has it that Welles, who in 1946 was producing with
Mike Todd a Broadway stage musical based on Around the World in Eighty Days,
needed $50,000 to complete the budget so that the musical could open. He called
Harry Cohn, the head of Columbia, and offered to write and star in a movie for
that amount of money,and direct the picture for free and with no credit. Cohn
asked, “What do you have in mind?” It may be an apocryphal story, but Welles,
who was calling Cohn from a phone booth, either saw a woman reading a pulp
paperback or he spied it on a rack of books. It was called If I Die Before I
Wake, a 1938 potboiler by Raymond Sherwood King. Welles, off the cuff,
grabbed the book and read the blurb on the back to tell Cohn what the movie was
about, but he improvised the title, calling it The Lady from Shanghai. (And,
indeed, Welles does not receive a credit for directing—there is no directing
credit at all.)
Cohn
made the deal, but on one condition—it had to star Rita Hayworth, who was at
the time Columbia’s biggest star. The problem with that was that Hayworth and
Welles were married, but their union was on the rocks. They were estranged from
each other.
But,
hey, both Welles and Hayworth were professionals. They could work together. And
they did. Welles assembled the cast, wrote the script, and proceeded to film on
location (New York, San Francisco, out at sea) so that no one would interfere
with the work. Of course, he went over budget and delivered a movie that was
three hours long. Cohn went berserk, took the film away from Welles, and cut it
down to approximately 90 minutes. Once again, Welles’ “vision” was hijacked.
And
yet… AND
YET… The Lady from Shanghai is a MARVELOUS motion picture! No, it wasn’t
well received by the critics or the public in 1948 when it was finally released
(it had premiered in France in 1947)… but time is often kind to movies made by
Orson Welles, and today The Lady from Shanghai is considered a film
noir classic.
Film
noir (not
a term used at the time) was big in the late 1940s. Movies like Double
Indemnity, The Big Sleep, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The
Killers, and Out of the Past were coming out fast and furiously. The
Lady from Shanghai and The Stranger are Welles’ contributions to
that stylistic movement of dark shadows, high contrast lighting,
Expressionistic design, cynical and hard-boiled characters, and crime that
doesn’t pay.
Michael
O’Hara (Welles) is an out of work seaman who meets gorgeous Elsa Bannister
(Hayworth) in Central Park one evening. He immediately falls for her, even
though she is married to one of the country’s most accomplished defense
attorneys, Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane). O’Hara is hired to be a crewman
on Bannister’s yacht as the couple sails around North America, through the
Panama Canal, from New York to San Francisco. Along the way, Bannister’s sleazy
business partner, George Grisby (stage actor Glenn Anders, in an extraordinary,
eccentric performance), asks O’Hara to “kill” him in a plot to fake his own
death. O’Hara would be paid enough money for he and Elsa to run away together.
Ah, but nothing is what it seems. Grisby is, of course, setting up O’Hara for a
big fall, and Elsa is, you guessed it, a femme fatale.
The
plot is rather complex and there was much critical lashing at the time of the
movie’s release that it was “incomprehensible,” but this is simply not the
case. Even though Columbia deleted 1-1/2 hours from Welles’ rough cut, the
story still makes sense… and as film noir expert Eddie Muller explains
on one of the Blu-ray disk’s supplements, what isn’t explained in the movie can
easily be interpreted by audiences who are somewhat intelligent. (He calls it a
“film noir poem.”)
The
most memorable sequence is the famed climax that takes place at an abandoned
amusement park outside San Francisco. The chase and ultimate shootout in an old
fun house made up of a mirror maze has been copied many times in subsequent
motion pictures (Enter the Dragon and The Man with the Golden Gun,
for example). But the surreal quality of Welles’ direction of this sequence
reminds one of the surrealist paintings of Salvador Dalí, and it is masterfully presented. Supposedly the scene was
to have lasted nearly twenty minutes. If only we could see what ended up on the
cutting room floor!
The new Blu-ray edition from Kino
Lorber looks exquisite. The glorious black and white cinematography (by the
credited Charles Lawton Jr., with uncredited work by Rudolph Maté and Joseph
Walker) is sharp and clear. There are three different audio commentaries
one can choose to accompany the film: one by film historian Imogen Sara Smith,
another by novelist and critic Tim Lucas, and another by filmmaker Peter
Bogdanovich, who spent a lot of his later career commenting on Welles’ life and
work. An additional video supplement is an interview with Bogdanovich about the
making of the movie. A video interview with Eddie Muller shines a light on the
apocryphal tales of the movie’s production. Finally, the theatrical trailer
rounds out the package.
The Lady from Shanghai is a top-notch gem, and the new Kino Lorber release is a
good way to experience it. For fans of film noir, Orson Welles, and Rita
Hayworth. Highly recommended.
Many
narratives, novels, dramas and films depict an artist at the mercy of a work he
is unable to complete. Constantly deferred and failed attempts bring him to the
verge of death or madness. In the celebrated Fellini’s Otto e mezzo (aka
8 ½) (1963), the film director Guido Anselmi dreams to realize a film he
is unable to create. Just as in Marcel Proust’s In search of the lost Time (that
may be the model of the script), we have to wait until the end of the
film for the creator to find a way of realizing his work, which is, of course,
the one we have just been watching.
In
real life, too, artistic creation often entails battling with a work dreamed of
but which remains forever unrealized. The aim of my book is to show that in
regards to this dream project, that the creator longs to produce and always
abandons, is at the center of his creative adventure. It constitutes the key to
his oeuvre.
How
did I arrive at such a thesis? Many years ago, I discovered in Jean Genet’s
manuscripts (sent by Jean Genet to his American translator and agent, Bernard
Frechtman), a draft of a project named La Mort (Death) on which he
worked almost twenty years. Genet did not finish writing this text. But by analyzing the drafts that remained of this great
project, I realized that it provided the key to understanding Genet’s creative
work as a whole. The meaning of ambiguous plays by Genet like The Balcony,
The Blacks or The Screens aswell
of his theoretical and political worksis put in light by the aims that Genet had set himself in La Mort.
In
Fellini’s case, the twists and turns in the long-delayed shooting of the Viaggio
di G. Mastorna (The Journey of G. Mastorna) have passed into legend. In Otto
e mezzo (1963), Fellini depicted a film director who was unable to make a
film whose actors were already signed up and huge sets already built.
A
few years later real life imitated fiction. Fellini collaborated with Dino
Buzzati and Brunello Rondi on a screenplay about the realm of the Dead (Il
viaggio di G. Mastorna). Just as in the imaginary scenario in Otto e
mezzo, the preparations for shooting are very well advanced. The enormous
sets are ready. Thousands of costumes have been made. The actors’ contracts are
signed. And then to the despair of producer Dino De Laurentiis, Fellini
abandoned the project. Fellini was to return often to the Viaggio di G.
Mastorna without ever succeeding in finishing it. He rewrote the screenplay
with other screenwriters, Bernadino Zapponi and Tonino Guerra. The American
film director Mike Nichols offered him a million dollars for the screen rights.
Fellini refused because he still believed he would one day be able to make it
himself. In the last months of his life, he even agreed to its becoming a
graphic novel by Milo Manara. Only a few days before his death in September
1993, confined to his hospital bed, Fellini was still drawing Mastorna’s
mysterious outline. It was his last self-portrait.
The
Journey of G. Mastorna was intended by Fellini to be a
“Metaphysical James Bond film”. Understanding this dream project sheds new
light on Fellini’s films.Spaghetti, women with enormous breasts,
dreams: Fellini’s stock in trade is all too well known. It ends up obscuring
the true meaning of an oeuvre which is quasi prophetic, a voice raging against
the materialism of the modern world, an ongoing quest for the sacred. The large
number of books on spiritualism in Fellini’s library show how interested he was
in these subjects. Mastorna was intended as an investigation into what
happens after Death because Fellini was certain that something after Death
existed. Fellini- like Genet- is
a mystic whose quest takes place far from religious institutions.
My
book evokes also other cinematographic dream projects: the adaptation of Marcel
Proust’s In search of the lost Time by Luchino Visconti, L’Enfer
(Hell) by Georges Clouzot and the Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon on which
the film director spent years gathering prodigious amounts of documentation.
For
each of the main dream projects depicted in the book, my approach was the same.
First, I reconstructed the different stages of the unfinished work. Then, I
established a link between the abandoned project, and the overall work of this
artist, thereby shedding new light on the totality of his oeuvre.
Following their acclaimed book "A Wealth of Pigeons", Steve Martin and his friend, New Yorker magazine cartoonist Harry Bliss, have collaborated on another volume of cartoons, "Number One is Walking". The title refers to how the main star on the set of a movie is referred to. "Number One is Walking", is shouted to advise the crew that the main star is en route to the set. Martin advises there is a numeric pecking order that only Hollywood could create. Each actor's status is diminished by how far down the line his or her "number" is. The first half of this book consists of Bliss's cartoon depictions of Martin's experiences on movie sets. Refreshingly, the humor is gentle and self-deprecating towards Martin. Many of the cartoons depict Martin's devotion to his beloved pet dogs. Bliss's work- intentionally or not- calls to mind the creations of Gary Larson , the mad genius behind "The Far Side". Larson went into self-imposed retirement some years ago, so Bliss's clever work helps fill the gap. During the film-related section of the book, Martin recalls amusing anecdotes involving most of the more prominent productions he appeared in. He has nothing but kind words to say about everyone he mentions or depicts in the book, with special praise given to Carl Reiner, with whom he collaborated on several films. The film section of the book is presented in comic book style with multi-panel cartoons and the anecdotes are interesting and funny. Martin explains why he gave up making feature films, writing "I lost interest in movies at exactly the same time movies lost interest in me". He relates that after making 40 feature films, he found the process too taxing and time-consuming. Thus, he re-evaluated his life and career and decided to slow down. He wrote a great deal (books, songs, plays) and teamed with his old pal Martin Short for a stand-up comedy tour that resulted in their hit streaming series "Only Murders in the Building". The second half of the book is a creative free-for-all and features full-panel cartoons unrelated to Martin's film career.
"Number One is Walking" has only one drawback for fans of Martin's movies, namely, the cursory anecdotes might well be his only attempt to provide us with insights into the making of these films. One would hope that a traditional book of memoirs about his movies might someday come to pass. In the interim, this book is amusing and classy, much like Martin and his distinctive brand of timeless humor.
RETRO-ACTIVE: THE BEST FROM THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVES
By Lee Pfeiffer
You don't have to be gay to admire John Schlesinger's 1971 film Sunday Bloody Sunday but it probably helps in terms of appreciating just how ground-breaking the movie was in its day. As a straight guy of high school age when the film was released, I do remember it causing a sensation, although it would literally take me many years before I finally caught up with the film. Gay friends always spoke reverently of the movie and expressed how the most refreshing aspect of the story was how normally a loving relationship between two adult men was portrayed. In viewing the film as a Criterion Blu-ray release, I feel I can finally appreciate that point of view. Gay men have long been portrayed in movies, of course, but for the most part they had been depicted as objects of ridicule or as sexual deviants. There were the odd attempts to present gay characters as sympathetic in films such as The Trials of Oscar Wilde and the brilliant Victim. Yet, even these fine efforts present homosexuality as a burden those "afflicted" must bear. Stanley Donen's 169 film Staircase offered fascinating and bold performances by Rex Harrison and Richard Burton as two aging queens. However, the studio marketing campaign over-emphasized the oddity of two of the film industry's great lady's men playing a gay couple. In fact, the ad campaign showed Burton and "Sexy Rexy" giddily dancing, thus falsely conveying that the film was a comedic romp instead of a poignant and intelligent look at loving homosexual relationship. Schlesinger, one of the first unapologetic directors to come out of the closet (if, indeed, he was ever in one), decided that the most daring aspect of this highly personal film would be in its very ordinariness. The story covers a complicated love triangle between three disparate people. Dr. Daniel Hirsh (Peter Finch) is a middle-aged, Jewish London doctor who is involved romantically with a much younger man, Bob Elkin (Murray Head). Hirsh doesn't flaunt his homosexuality, nor does he attempt to painstakingly deny it. He just lives his life as a respected member of his community, although it is clear his family thinks he's straight. (In one amusing, though uncomfortable sequence, Hirsh attends a Bar Mitzvah and has to endure attempts by nosy female relatives to set him up with his "dream girl"). The relationship between Hirsh and Bob is fairly intense, but is compromised by one uncomfortable fact: Bob is bi-sexual and is carrying on an equally intense love affair with an older woman, Alex Greville (Glenda Jackson). Both Hirsh and Alex know about each other and (barely) tolerate the triangle as the price of having Bob in their lives. For his part, Bob is a rather self-absorbed young man who seems to have genuine affection for both of his lovers, but is also either oblivious or uncaring about how the uncertainties of the relationship are affecting their psychological well-being.
Sunday Bloody Sunday was released a time when the gay rights movement was moving into high gear in the post-Stonewall period. It illustrates why the 1970s is regarded by many as the most liberating decade in film history, with old line directors like Hawks, Welles and Hitchcock working at the same time young turks like Schlesinger were shaking things up in a way the old masters never had the opportunity to do, thanks to the restrictive motion picture code. Sunday is primarily remembered for an eyebrow-raising scene in which Hirsh and Bob engage in a romantic kiss. There's nothing sensational about the tasteful way in which this rather routine gesture between lovers is presented on screen. In fact, it was the sheer lack of sensationalism that drove home Schlesinger's primary message: that loving gestures between gay men can be every bit as routine as they are between husband and wife. The fact that the kiss was enacted by two straight actors did add considerable gravitas to the moment and must have caused more than one straight viewer to think "Well, if they don't care about enacting such a scene, why should I feel uncomfortable watching it?" Schlesinger also dared to film tasteful but passionate bedroom scenes between Bob and Hirsh. Nevertheless, nothing much actually happens in Sunday Bloody Sunday. The story was based in part on real-life experiences and people from Schlesinger's own life. The story merely traces the ups and downs in the love triangle as Bob causes panic in both Hirsh and Alex by announcing he is thinking of moving to America. Hirsh and Alex do have an unexpected face-to-face meeting during this crisis and their sheer civility and inability to engage in more than light banter only adds to the dramatic tension.
The primary attribute of the film, aside from Schlesinger's spot-on direction, is the brilliance of the performances. Glenda Jackson was then emerging as a national treasure for the British film industry and the little-known Murray Head acquits himself very well indeed. However, it is Peter Finch's performance that dominates the movie as we watch his character go from loving acceptance of Bob's youthful self-absorbing actions to downright fury as his realization that Bob will never have the same passion for him. It's a superb performance on every level. Some viewers find the film's bizarre final sequence in which Hirsh addresses the viewer directly about his philosophy of life, but I found it to be a distraction and somewhat confusing. Nevertheless, this is a fine film, worthy of the praise it has generated over the years, and one that remains remarkably timely today.
The Criterion Blu-ray is right up to the company's top-notch standards. The transfer is beautiful and there are the usual informative extras including:
New interviews with Murray Head (who says that, as a young actor, he found his character to be rather despicable), cinematographer Billy Williams (who supervised the Blu-ray transfer), production designer Luciana Arrighi, Schlesinger biographer William J. Mann and the director's long-time partner, photographer Michael Childers who shot many of the great production stills for the film.
A 1975 audio interview with Schlesinger
Screenwriter Penelope Gillatt's original introduction to the published screenplay (there is plenty of coverage throughout the Blu-ray concerning the tense working relationship between Gillatt and Schlesinger, who accused the writer of taking the lion's share of credit for a screenplay he had extensively rewritten.)
The original theatrical trailer
Extensive liner notes by writer Ian Buruma, Schlesinger's nephew who appeared as an extra in the film.
In all, an outstanding tribute to an outstanding work by one of the era's great filmmakers.
Click here to order from Amazon. The film is also currently streaming on the Screenpix app, available for $2.99 a month through Amazon Prime, Roku and Apple TV.
The folks who might best recall Crane Wilbur as the dashing
paramour of Pearl White in the silent chapter serial The Perils of Pauline (1914) are now long gone.Though he continued to accept occasional film
and stage roles, by the early 1930s, Wilbur turned to screenwriting and
directing.He had already garnered
plenty of experience with the former, having produced a score of scenarios for
two and four reel silents from 1915-1925.Though he’s likely best remembered for his scripts on such sound “crime
and punishment” noirs as He Walked by
Night (1948), Wilbur also dabbled in horror-mysteries, turning out scripts for
a trio of Vincent Price vehicles (House
of Wax (1953), The Mad Magician
(1954) and The Bat (1959).
Truth be told, The
Bat is not considered one of Crane’s (nor Price’s) best films, but there’s still
plenty to like about - assuming creaky manor murder mysteries are your
thing.The film setting is a sprawling
mansion that houses a secret, and within that familiar scenario all traditional
mystery tropes are present.There’s
thunder and lightning, shutters battered by ghostly winds, shadowy staircases,
secret rooms, suits of armor toppling for unexplained reasons, and – of course –
victims dispassionately dispatched by “The Bat,” a mysterious figure cloaked in
black.“The Bat,” we learn, is
rightfully feared.There are reports he already
mercilessly murdered two women, both having their “throats ripped open with
steel claws.”
To no cinemagoer’s surprise, Chief of Detectives
Lieutenant Andy Anderson (Gavin Gordon) suspects the person masquerading as “The
Bat” is the otherwise affable Dr. Malcolm Wells (Vincent Price).His suspicions are not unreasonable: Dr.
Wells works with live bats in his humble home laboratory in which he –
inexplicably – secrets a neon-lit portraiture of a bat in full wingspread behind
a window curtain. We also learn, quite
early in the film, that while Price appears malleable he’s nonetheless a man capable
of violence.
During a remote cabin visit with his friend John Fleming,
a bank president, Wells is asked what ends he might agree to for a half-million
dollar reward.“Anything short of
murder,” Wells replies.When Fleming –
rather stupidly - confesses to embezzling 350,000 bonds of his bank’s negotiable
securities, Price is shocked by his friend’s frank admission.Dr. Wells initially appears a man of honor, steadfastly
refusing to be a half-partner in the scheme.Disappointed with his friend’s lukewarm response to a criminal
partnership, the duplicitous banker has no choice but kill Dr. Wells – who now
knows too much.But Price, getting the upper-hand,
manages to shoot Fleming dead.He disposes
of Fleming’s body in a forest fire set to cover evidence of the struggle and murder.
Though the police are still unaware of Fleming’s murder,
they are investigating the reports the bank has been swindled of one million
dollars. Both the police and the mysterious “The Bat” appear to have focused their
interests in getting their hands on the purloined assets.They are not the only interested parties.John Fleming’s nephew Mark (John Bryant) is set
to inherit his Uncle’s riches due to his relative having perished in the
“forest fire.”Bryant believes the
stolen funds might be secretly stashed somewhere in the Oaks, the old mansion leased
by his Uncle to the famed mystery novelist Cornelia van Gorder (Agnes
Moorehead). Bryant has access to the builder’s original blueprints to the
mansion.He plans to use them to search
out a secret room and the stolen assets.
Moorehead’s life as a mystery writer is neither solitary nor
contemplative.It’s actually a pretty
busy place, with police coming and going and with house guests and intruders’
alike murdered.She shares her home with
busy-bee, nervous housekeeper Lizzie Allen (Lenita Lane) and a stone-faced chauffeur-butler
Warner (John Sutton).Sutton’s face, if
not his name, should be familiar to Vincent Price fans.The two actors shared screen credit in such
productions as The Tower of London
(1939), The Invisible Man Returns
(1940), and The Return of the Fly
(1959).
The scenario of The
Bat was lifted from Mary Roberts Rinehart’s 1908 novel The Circular Staircase, already made as a five-reel silent film as
early as 1915.In 1920 the novel was adapted
for a successful and long-running Broadway stage play retitled The Bat.The popularity of the stage play begat three subsequent film versions (a
nine-reel silent version (1926) and two sound versions: The Bat Whispers (1930) and The
Bat (1959).
Though a redoubtable mystery, if you’re unable to sort
out the identity of “The Bat” within the pictures first twenty minutes… Well, I
suggest you skip a career in police or detective work.That’s not to say Wilbur’s eighty-minute
running time version lags or lacks surprises.But the film is a bit insular: ninety-five percent of the film – which
began production on April 27, 1959 – was shot economically and stagey in
interior settings.In the final analysis
Wilbur delivers a workmanlike, familiar mystery that’s just intriguing enough
to hold one’s interest… but, alas, it’s no classic.
There was some effort made to freshen the old property.While the film was in production C.J. Tevlin
of Liberty Pictures told the Los Angeles
Mirror that Wilbur was determined to bring a “horror” element to the
“classic murder mystery.” To that end, the filmmakers were going introduce live
bats into the existing scenario:“Two dozen bats have been collected and put
into cages at Allied Artists studio for use in the picture.Augie Lohman, head of the special effects
department, hired Indian boys to capture the bats from caves near his Tehachapi
ranch.The bats have 13-inch
wingspreads, with bodies considerably larger than a mouse, and vicious,
needle-like teeth.”Sure, it all sounded
cool.So it’s disappointing when only two
smallish bats appear on screen, one so tightly gripped it’s barely allowed a single
flutter.
If nothing else, such early production ballyhoo recognized
horror films were hot, inexpensive commercial commodities, its spooky tropes
certain to bring in audiences.1959 was,
in a sense, a career-defining year for Vincent Price.He was seen on the big screen in no fewer
than five feature films, three of which were horror/sci-fi offerings regarded today
as minor cult-classics: House on Haunted
Hill, The Tingler and The Return of Fly.In comparison to that celebrated trio, The Bat serves only weak tea, though
Price’s role as Dr. Wells further solidified his reputation as the preeminent star
of contemporary horror pictures.
Of course for all of its trappings, The Bat is not a horror
film.In fact there’s little denying
there were more cobwebs in the script than on the walls.Upon the film’s release, critical reaction to
the picture was mixed, ranging from muted praise to mild dismissal.One review noted, fairly, “Despite
author-director Crane Wilbur’s “modernization” of the screenplay […] “The Bat”
creaks with age, and all the ails and aches of its stereotyped plot
convolutions are manifold.”
It is what it is.Film
Detective has given us what I believe is the nicest transfer of The Bat that I’ve seen, and I’ve seen
plenty: the film has long been in public domain status.More often than not, you could find the film
on one of those cheaply-produced mystery/horror/suspense budget multi-pack
releases relegated to chain-store discount bins.This Film Detective “Special Edition,” is
just that – very special.Offering The
Bat in a 1.85:1 aspect radio and dts monaural sound, the company has chosen
to spruce up their already elegant presentation with a number of intriguing bonus
features.
For starters, we’re treated to the twenty-three minute
featurette The Case for Crane Wilbur,
written and produced by Daniel Griffith for Ballyhoo Pictures, with narration
by C. Courtney Joyner.The documentary
compactly traces Wilbur’s career on the stage through his debut as a film actor
in 1910 and examines his second career as screenwriter and director.
The set also includes an informative audio commentary
courtesy of film noir scholar Jason A. Ney.Ney is also the author of the sixteen-page booklet included in the
set.His essay, The Case of the Forgotten Author: The Literary Conundrum of Mary
Roberts Rinehart, studies the work of this now mostly forgotten but wildly
successful mystery novelist whose novel and play inspired the many iterations
of The Bat.
One of the most generous additions to this set – and one
I’m particularly enthralled with - is the inclusion of no fewer than nine –
yes, nine - archival radio broadcasts
featuring Vincent Price.These
recordings, sourced from such vintage radio programs as Suspense, Escape, Theatre of Romance, Hollywood Star Time and the CBS
Radio Workshop, were taken from the original broadcasts 1943 through 1956.This collection of programs alone make this
set a required purchase for fans of the actor who might not have yet examined –
or dimly recall - Price’s radio work.
It took sixty-three years but there is now a complete
score for Elmer Bernstein's 1960 classic The Magnificent Seven. Quartet Records
in association with MGM has released a four-CD set of The Magnificent Seven
Collection. It includes the soundtracks for the four movies in the franchise -
the original, Return, Guns and Ride. As an extra, the set includes The Music
from Marlboro Country, a promotional LP made by Phillip Morris in 1967 which
consists of recycled cues from Return and orchestrations inspired by
Bernstein's themes. As I recall, the record was sent free to fans who submitted
proof of purchase of Marlboro cigarettes. The best news is that the entire
original 1960 score is finally available.
The first disc is for the original film and has a running
time of 78:40 with a runoff of additional cues, not in sequence, on disc four.
Some cues are as short as both eleven and sixteen seconds. Bernstein's
daughter, Emilie, previously produced a 1998 CD of the original but it only had
twenty-four tracks, whereas the new release contains forty-one, including some
as memorable as "Chico's Bravado", "Enemy Camp" and
"Lee's Problem". There is also an illustrated thirty-six page booklet
about each movie and Bernstein's involvement. The liner notes don't specify how
the tracks were enhanced or tweaked but they all sound the best they ever have.
The entire package is, well, magnificent.
Press Release from Quartet:
Celebrating the centenary of Maestro Elmer Bernstein,
Quartet Records and MGM are proud to present a mammoth, deluxe 4-CD collection
with the original iconic MAGNIFICENT SEVEN saga that comprises four films produced
between 1960 and 1972, all of them scored by the great Elmer Bernstein.
Bernstein’s music is a genre-defining masterpiece.
Inspired, in part, by the work of Aaron Copland, the composer created a
distinctive blend of Americana and what he called Tex-Mex elements without
resorting—as so many of his predecessors did—to quoting actual folksongs. The
score is replete with memorable themes and rife with tension when such is
called for. Following the development of Bernstein’s music through all four films
makes for a fascinating journey!
The score of THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN was not officially
released until 1998 by Ryko. For this new release, on Disc 1, we accessed three
1/4? full-track monaural rolls of “print” takes vaulted by MGM to expand upon
the earlier edition. Several bonus tracks are included at the end of Disc 4 due
to insufficient room on the first disc.
For RETURN OF THE SEVEN, only the celebrated re-recording
done by Bernstein in London has survived; the scoring masters and music stems
remain lost. For Disc 2 of this set, we newly transferred the 1/4? stereo album
master and have maintained the spacing the composer placed between each track.
We have also included the CD premiere of the rare album recorded by the
composer for a promotional Philip Morris & Co. campaign on United Artists
Records: THE MUSIC FROM MARLBORO COUNTRY, sourced from the 1/4? stereo album
master.
GUNS OF THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN is perhaps the most varied and
musically satisfying of the sequels. We have used on Disc 3 the same extended
stereo program produced by Lukas Kendall for the Film Score Monthly label and
included in a long-out-of-print western box set.
For the final entry in the series, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN
RIDE!, Bernstein’s orchestrators, Leo Shuken and Jack Hayes, adapted the
composer’s thematic material to fit sequences in the movie. A single day was
spent recording at the Universal Scoring Stage in Los Angeles with Bernstein
conducting. While scoring masters remain elusive, we have accessed the monaural
music stem to include the 45 minutes of music heard in the film on Disc 4.
Meticulously produced, restored and mastered by Chris
Malone, the package designed by Nacho B. Govantes comes with cover art created
by Jim Titus and a 36-page booklet with an in-depth essay by authoritative
music writer Frank K. DeWald.
Elmer Bernstein never wavered from his commitment to
write music that enhanced every film he scored with beauty, excitement, passion
and dignity. Quartet Records is proud to celebrate his centenary with this 4-CD
compendium of all the surviving music Bernstein recorded for the four original
MAGNIFICENT SEVEN films. Enjoy the ride!
John Hamilton’s 2005
book Beasts in the Cellar: The Exploitation Film Career of Tony Tenser
(FAB Press), is probably the book in my collection that I have referred to the
most in the eighteen years since I bought it. It is an incredible piece of
research and writing and one which has inspired me with my own writing
projects. It was during his time spent with Tony Tenser writing that book that
the idea for this one first emerged, and now almost twenty years later John
Hamilton has given us a book solely dedicated to the films produced in the UK
by one of Tony Tenser’s frequent partners, American International Pictures. AIP
had achieved unheard of levels of success in the states with their teen-themed
drive-in titles such as I Was a Teenage Werewolf (Gene Fowler Jr., 1957)
and Invasion of the Saucer Men (Edward L. Cahn, also 1957) and naturally
as they expanded, they looked to the UK for skilled craftsmen, excellent studio
facilities and perfect locations for their often creepy, gothic-tinged films.
With in-house directors such as Roger Corman delivering fantastic films on low
budgets they could afford to take some risks, and they began by investing in
British projects such as Horrors of the Black Museum (Arthur Crabtree,
1959) before taking a more vested interest in bigger projects such as the giant
ape over London epic Konga (John Lemont, 1961).
After establishing
relationships with UK producers like Tony Tenser they were able to produce an
incredible run of films, many of which are still considered important today.
These include The Masque of the Red Death (Roger Corman, 1964), Witchfinder
General (Michael Reeves, 1968) and The Abominable Dr Phibes (Robert
Fuest, 1971), to name just three. And yes, they all also happen to star Vincent
Price. For more than a decade Price was on the AIP payroll and he loved working
in Europe and the UK for them as it gave him plenty of opportunities to scour the
art galleries and antique shops, as well as being able to dine at all the
finest restaurants and make occasional appearances on radio and television.
AIP’s contribution to
British film production during the 1960s and 1970s was massive and it is terrific
that John Hamilton has produced this equally massive piece of work to reveal
just what they were up to. As is to be expected, the research is exemplary, and
the book is packed with images from behind the scenes and publicity shoots,
posters and other promotional material, and also, where available, images
highlighting the different versions of the films, where occasional ‘hot’ scenes
were shot for the continental or Japanese markets. The writing is thorough,
leaving no stone unturned, and with its use of archival and new interviews, in
many cases the tales are being told by the participants themselves.
With a foreword from
the late Gordon Hessler, who made a few of his most memorable films for AIP,
and an afterword by Phibes co-star Valli Kemp, Witches, Bitches and
Banshees: The British Films of American International Pictures is an
essential read for anyone interested in the cinema of the 1960s. The British
horror film-focused magazine Little Shoppe of Horrors, now in operation
for more than fifty years (and effectively still a one-man operation), is to be
congratulated for finally branching out into book publishing, and we at Cinema
Retro look forward to seeing what they bring us next.
By
Sandra de Bruin with Dean Brierly (BearManor Media), 218 pages, Hardback,
Paperback & Kindle, ISBN 979-8-88771-028-0
By Steve Stiefel
Overview
Hollywood
with a Smileis
not your typical self-indulgent memoir. You will find no axe grinding, closet
skeleton rattling, or “MeToo” posturing in these pages, just captivating
accounts by Sandra de Bruin of her successful and fascinating life as an
actress in the film capital of the world. During a career that spanned decades,
de Bruin enjoyed professional and personal encounters with countless Hollywood
icons. But rather than beating her own drum, she generously directs the focus
onto these familiar faces of film and television.
These
beguiling narratives enlighten and charm in equal measure: a hilarious
fender-bender with Paul Newman; a working relationship/friendship with Charlton
Heston; an affecting encounter with Elvis Presley; accolades from Ricardo
Montalban, James Garner and Dolly Parton; recurring chance meetings with Cliff
Robertson; adventures and misadventures on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny
Carson; a romantic relationship with legendary film director Robert Wise. Plus, intimate
perspectives on de Bruin’s life and dreams, follies and foibles, friendships
and loves.
A
poetical prologue sets the book’s tone and tempo and clarifies its raison d’être.
Additional context is provided through capsule biographies that introduce each
chapter and personality, and which underscore an era in which stars really were
stars. This one-of-a-kind book reveals a side of Hollywood rarely remarked
upon—its good side. Furthermore, the insights that de Bruin offers into the
vagaries of human character and behavior aren’t limited to her star-studded
subjects, but have a universal resonance beyond the bounds of the fabled Dream
Factory.
Photo courtesy of Sandra De Bruin.
Q&A
with Sandra de Bruin and Dean Brierly
Q:One of the most
unique aspects of the book is reading about famous stars like Paul Newman and
Charlton Heston outside of their familiar movie star personas.
A: This was a conscious
decision—to present these iconic figures in a down-to-earth and real-world
context in which they behave just like anyone else. We're all familiar with the
classic stories that have been endlessly repeated and recycled. But in our
book, you will encounter a different aspect, a different side, to people like
Paul Newman, James Garner, Jason Robards.
Q:What was your
reason for starting each celebrity chapter with their mini-biographies?
A: We did that partly
with younger generations in mind who might not be familiar with some of the
celebrities from Hollywood's Golden Era. And we tried whenever possible to draw
parallels to contemporary entertainers: for example, comparing Harry
Belafonte's talents and accomplishments to those of Usher. Not all of the
subjects in the book received the same renown during their lifetimes, like
actor Frederick Combs, designer Ret Turner, or C. Bernard Jackson, the
African-American playwright and founder of the Inner City Cultural Center in
Los Angeles, yet all three made huge creative and social contributions in their
respective domains.
Q:In fact, not all
of the people you write about were superstars.
A: We felt it was
important to pay tribute to the working actresses and actors and the
behind-the-scene folks who, in a real sense, are the backbone of Hollywood.
Their stories can be just as important and inspiring as those of their famous
contemporaries.
Q:Talk about the
tone of the book, which is uplifting and positive rather than self-indulgent
and snarky.
A: This was never
intended as a "tell-all" book, which as a genre feels overdone. There
are countless books devoted to dishing dirt on Hollywood stars, but we felt it
important to take a different approach. Everyone who has read the book says
they appreciate how positive and uplifting and funny it is in a nonjudgmental
way.
Q:Sandra, to a
remarkable degree, you don’t blow your own horn, and willingly reveal, as the
book's subtitle reads, your own follies and foibles. The focus really seems to
be on the subjects you write about rather than yourself. Why did you opt for
this approach?
A: We didn’t want this
book to be just another memoir about someone the general public has never
really heard of. We wanted it to mainly be about the icons of Hollywood and my
encounters with them, not the other way around. However, I also wanted to
include some of my own follies and foibles so the reader would have a sense of
who I am.
Q:Yet, these
anecdotes do reveal a great deal about your character and perspective, not only
with regard to the famous people you met, but towards your career as well. Were
you conscious of this during the writing of the book?
A: Yes, I certainly
was. Acting is definitely an art, but it is also a business. When not actually
performing, I always conducted myself according to my instilled values and in a
friendly business fashion. I never relied on my looks or my sexuality. Talent,
intellect, and tenacity made me a professional working actress.
Q:How did these
unique encounters influence your career and career decisions?
A:
Meeting
all these astonishing and highly successful people in a genre known for its
harsh climate made me realize that I could succeed by being true to myself. The
powers that be apparently respected that and my talent.
Q:
What
was the most enjoyable aspect of writing this book and the most challenging?
A: Writing this book
brought back wonderful memories. It made me giggle at my naiveté and applaud my
tenacity. The most challenging parts of it were the bios and pulling it all
together, but those issues were solved by my writing partner, Dean Brierly.
What a guy!
Q:Sandra, how did
you come up with a limerick for the prologue? It’s heartfelt, inspiring, and
delightful.
A: Thank you! Dean and
I agreed that most prologues are a tad boring and wanted to come up with
something different. After a glass of wine, or maybe two, I just sat down at
the computer and rolled it out. It came so easily! It still astonishes me.
Q:What do you hope
people will take away from your book?
A: That Hollywood is
not just Tinseltown, but is also filled with lovely people, some of whom become
well-deserved icons.
Testimonials
“Sandra
de Bruin’s memories of a cherished era in entertainment history are sure to
keep you captivated from one page to the next. The author’s unforgettable
encounters with select celebrities are presented with such authority and
clarity you feel as if you’re almost reliving the experiences with her.
—J.R.
Jordan, film historian and author of Robert Wise: The Motion Pictures
“What
a happy romp Sandra has written: a mélange of memorable vignettes about stars
she met or admired as a longtime actress in Hollywood. It’s at once warm,
revealing and hilarious. I loved it!”
—Nick
Lyons, author of Fire in the Straw
“I
always felt that actors who did not achieve superstardom have the more
interesting stories, and Sandra de Bruin is no exception. She shares her life
as a working actress, describing amusing encounters with some of Hollywood’s
biggest stars.”
—Tom
Lisanti, author of Carol Lynley: Her Film & TV Career in Thrillers,
Fantasy & Suspense
About
the Authors
• Sandra de Bruin has appeared in over 200
television shows, several major films, many Los Angeles stage productions,
numerous commercials, voiceover and looping...and, oh, yes, danced in a
production at the Los Angeles Music Center. Her informative and witty articles
have appeared in several magazines, and her scripts have been optioned, bought,
sold and dropped by major studios and independent producers alike. She created
the "Actor's Audition Log" and the "Performer's Workshop
Log" to fulfill the organizational needs of her fellow performers from
coast to coast and around the world.
•
Dean Brierlyis a film historian and writer who
has contributed to numerous print and online magazines, including Cinema
Retro, Filmfax, Outre?, and others. Among his many celebrity
interviews are Gordon Parks, David Carradine, Michael Moriarty, Stella Stevens,
Fred Williamson, and Joe Dante. Dean has contributed liner notes for Blu-ray
and DVD releases, and publishes several film blogs, including Fifties Crime
Films and Classic Hollywood Quotes.
Click here to order from Amazon. Available in hardback, softcover and Kindle versions.
"THE WAY WE WERE: THE MAKING OF A ROMANTIC CLASSIC" (Applause)
By Tom Santopietro
I started thinking about The Way We Were as the
subject of a possible book when I happened to hear two women quoting the entire
last scene of the film by heart, re-enacting Barbra Streisand’s Katie Morosky murmuring
“Hubbell, your girl is lovely” to the aging but still golden Robert Redford.
This behavior wasn’t just liking the film- this was quasi-obsession. When I
then happened to catch a re-run of “Sex and the City” where the four best
friends decide that the entire world is divided into “Katie girls” and others,
followed by Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw re-enacting The Way We
Were’s finale in front of the Plaza Hotel, I was intrigued. Hooked. Why
does this decidedly flawed film carry such romantic heft? After all, if the
best movies form parts of our world views and shape our dreams, what did this
hyper fandom for a fifty-year- old film say about the way we are today?
As I started to research the history of the film, my
“possibly writing” became a definite “yes”; accelerating the decision was
realizing that by writing about The Way We Were I was actually, if
unconsciously completing my trilogy of books centering on films that people
don’t just like, but actually obsess over: The Godfather Effect- drama, The
Sound of Music Story- musical, and now The Way We Were- romance.
The backstory was juicy in and of itself. Redford didn’t
want to make the film, dragging his heels until director Sidney Pollack wore
him down with promises of rewrites.Screenwriter Arthur Laurents
remained dissatisfied throughout filming, feuding with desperate producer Ray
Stark. The deeper I dug, the more intrigued I became: I spent several days at
the Library of Congress reading through Laurents’s papers, including a
scorching eight-page memo to Stark in whichhe enumerated the film’s
perceived flaws; flaws which he felt- and I’m translating politely here- were
so egregious that they made him feel sick. Eleven different screenwriters had a
hand in the script- no wonder Laurents was perpetually angry. His own life had
inspired several key incidents in the screenplay and his life was now being
re-written by eleven other people.
I liked the fact that in the early going this now iconic
film’s success was far from assured; as one studio executive only half-kiddingly
said to Sydney Pollack: “Barbra Streisand doesn’t sing and she plays a
communist—are you trying to kill me?!” The fact that no one expected a romantic
classic made its now half-century of success all the more intriguing. The film
had received decidedly mixed reviews upon its initial release, although the
stars were highly praised, and Streisand received an Academy Award nomination. (She
lost to Glenda Jackson for A Touch of Class, and when was the last time
anyone decided that they just had to watch A Touch of Class again?)
Streisand, she of the fearsome reputation, proved to be the
easiest personality for Pollack to handle. This was her chance to prove her
chops as a dramatic actress and she was happy with her part; she signed on as
soon as she read the treatment, acknowledging that the treatment more than met
David Lean’s dictum that five good scenes dictates an answer of “yes”. In her
own words: “This had more than five good scenes.” She may have worried over every
last detail during filming, but, Pollack explained, she was not being
difficult- she came from a place of deep concern. She wanted it all to meet her
own perfectionist standards.
A sneak preview proceeded swimmingly- until, that is, the
political unrest of the blacklist period, so central to Laurents’s life and his
conception of the story, shot to the foreground. As soon as the love story
receded, audiences left the theater for popcorn and a cigarette. It was the
love story people cared about, not the polemics. Which meant that after that
first preview in San Francisco, ten minutes of politics was edited out
overnight with a razor blade. Literally. It left the film in a choppy state but
the love story now remained front and center and audiences at the second
preview cheered.
Industry publications predicted a big box office opening followed
by a quick drop-off, but the drop-off never came. Viewers returned to the film
over and over, which leads to the ultimate question: Why did audiences care so
much, unfailingly starting to cry over Katie and Hubbell’s final break-up. And
the more I read, the more I watched, and the more I interviewed (Streisand,
James Woods –his first film- lyricist Alan Bergman, Lois Chiles), I
found four reasons for the film’s extraordinary 50-year hold on audiences
around the world:
nStar chemistry in spades. Redford and Streisand at their
early ‘70s peak, looking great and throwing off sparks together, proving that
opposites really do attract. Everything about them reads as a contrast- looks,
acting styles, manner of speech- and it all blends beautifully.
nIll-fated love affairs are universal. Like Katie and
Hubbell, everyone in the viewing audience has loved the wrong person at one
time. Or at several times. Everyone has loved passionately, if not wisely. As
film historian Jeanine Basinger put it: “Yes- everyone really has loved the
wrong person at one point or another. Except for maybe 10 people- and who wants
to know them?”
nThe uber romantic score by the then unknown Marvin Hamlisch,
who composed the title song on spec, in hopes of scoring the entire movie. His
reward? Two Oscars.
nThat killer ending in front of the Plaza. For the three
people over 50 in the United States who haven’t seen the film, I won’t describe
it- except to say that even critics who didn’t like the film fell for the
ending- it’s an all time keeper.
And as audiences clamored to know if Katie and Hubbell would
ever get back together, the clamor for a sequel grew in volume.Talks were held.
Screenplays were written. So what happened?
To find that out you have to read the book. Besides, I have
my own idea for a sequel.
Cinema Retro has received the following announcement from Kino Lorber:
“Marathon
Man”
(1976,
125m)
4K
UHD + Blu-ray
Street
Date: 2/28/2023
Director:
John Schlesinger
Starring:
Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, Roy Scheider, William Devane, Marthe Keller,
Fritz Weaver, Marc Lawrence, Jacques Marin, Richard Bright
Is
it safe? From the best-selling novel by William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, Misery) comes one of the most daring and
affecting thrillers ever brought to the screen. Dustin Hoffman (Papillon) plays
the likable graduate student and marathon runner of the title, unwillingly
trapped in a killing game of intrigue involving a Nazi fugitive, Christian
Szell. Laurence Olivier (Sleuth) received an Academy Award nomination for his
chilling portrayal of Szell, who turns dental instruments into tools of torture
with dispassionate ease. Directed by John Schlesinger (Billy Liar, Midnight Cowboy,
The Day of the Locust), Marathon Man moves with nail-biting suspense to its
gripping, fever-pitched conclusion. Featuring Roy Scheider (Jaws), William
Devane (Rolling Thunder), Marthe Keller (Black Sunday) and the extraordinary
cinematography of Conrad Hall (Electra Glide in Blue).
Bonus
Features:
DISC
1 (4KUHD): Brand New HDR/Dolby Vision Master – From a 4K Scan of the Original
Camera Negative | NEW Audio Commentary by Film Historians Steve Mitchell and
Nathaniel Thompson | 5.1 Surround and Lossless 2.0 Audio | Triple-Layered
UHD100 Disc | Optional English Subtitles / DISC 2 (BLU-RAY): Brand New 2022 HD
Master – From a 4K Scan of the 35mm Original Camera Negative | NEW Audio
Commentary by Film Historians Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson | The Magic
of Hollywood: Original Making of Marathon Man | Going the Distance: Remembering
Marathon Man | Rehearsal Footage | Theatrical Trailer | 10 TV Spots | 2 Radio
Spots | Dual-Layered BD50 Disc | Optional English Subtitles
One of the benefits of subscribing to the New York Times is that you get access to the Times Machine, their on-line archive of every page of every issue of the newspaper dating back to day one. In researching a film review, we couldn't help but browse through the film section. It simply reinforced the opinion that during this era, you could throw a dart on any date on a calendar and be assured that a wealth of worthy flicks were in release. In this case, "The Odd Couple" was a massive hit at Radio City Music Hall while other films, ranging from "B" movies to prestigious hits, were gracing Gotham theaters. They include "Half a Sixpence", "The Producers", "The Detective", "The Devil's Brigade", "The Graduate", "Doctor Doolittle", "The Swimmer", the reissue of "Gone with the Wind", "2002: A Space Odyssey", "Wild in the Streets", "Belle de Jour", "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" and other gems. Those really were the days!
The Australian video label ViaVision's Imprint line has released "The Avengers: The Emma Peel Collection (1965-1967) as a Blu-ray special edition set consisting of 16 discs containing every episode featuring Diana Rigg. We just received a review set and haven't even made a dent in the mind-boggling number of bonus extra features but we can say that the quality is outstanding throughout. Best of all, the set is region-free.
Here is the official description:
Extraordinary
crimes against the people and the state have to be avenged by agents
extraordinary. Two such people are John Steed, top professional, and his
partner, Emma Peel, talented amateur. Otherwise known as The Avengers.
With lethal bowler hat and umbrella, killer fashion and kung fu, the secret
agents investigate bizarre and colourful adventures with nonchalant efficiency,
sophistication and charm.
Whilst
every era of the long-running, enduringly popular and trend-setting British
series has its own unique style, charm and wit, it is the Emma Peel years that
have become the programme’s most iconic and recognisable, with Diana Rigg’s
portrayal of Mrs. Emma Peel ushering in a new era of excitement, fashion and
iconology, coupled with Patrick Macnee’s continuing depiction of the urbane and
sublime John Steed.
Now,
this 16-disc Blu-ray set brings together every episode from the Emma Peel era
in stunning high-definition encompassing the complete Series 4 and 5, plus a
copious collection of vintage and new Special Features celebrating this peak
era of The Avengers.
Special
Features and Technical Specs:
1080p
high-definition presentation from the original 35mm elements
Collectable
double-sided Hardbox packaging LIMITED to 1500 copies
120-page booklet
featuring essay by Dick Fiddy of the British Film Institute and Story
Information for every episode taken from the original studio files
Original ‘as
broadcast’ mono audio tracks (LPCM)
Original ‘as
broadcast’ “The Avengers in Color” opening slate on Series 5 episodes
Audio Commentary
on “The Town of No Return” by producer / writer Brian Clemens and director
Roy Ward Baker
Audio Commentary
on “The Master Minds” by writer Robert Banks Stewart
Audio Commentary
on “Dial A Deadly Number” by writer Roger Marshall
Audio Commentary
on “The Hour That Never Was” by director Gerry O’Hara
Audio Commentary
on “The House That Jack Built” by director Don Leaver
Audio Commentary
on “The Winged Avenger” by writer Richard Harris
Audio Commentary
on “Epic” by guest actor Peter Wyngarde
NEW Audio
Commentary on “The Joker” by filmmakers Sam Clemens and George Clemens
(sons of writer/producer Brian Clemens) (2022)
Audio Commentary
on “Return of The Cybernauts” by Diana Rigg’s stunt-double Cyd Child
Audio Commentary
on “Murdersville” by producer / writer Brian Clemens
Filmed
introductions to eight Series 5 episodes by producer / writer Brian
Clemens
Filmed
introduction to “The ?50,000 Breakfast” by guest actress Anneke Wills
Brief audio
recollection from guest actor Francis Matthews on filming “The Thirteenth
Hole”
“THE AVENGERS
AT 50” – Footage captured from the 50th anniversary celebration
of the series, held at Chichester University in 2011. Includes: video
message from Patrick Macnee, interviews with producer / writer Brian
Clemens, director Don Leaver (never before released), director Gerry
O’Hara (never before released), stunt co-ordinator Raymond Austin, guest
actress Carol Cleveland, guest actress Anneke Wills, writer Roger
Marshall, and Patrick Macnee’s biographer Marie Cameron
“Dame Diana Rigg
at the BFI” – 2015 on-stage interview and Q&A held at the British Film
Institute in London to celebrate 50 years of Emma Peel
“The Series Of
No Return” – audio interview with actress Elizabeth Shepherd, who was
originally cast as Emma Peel
Granada Plus
Points featuring actor Patrick Macnee, composer Laurie Johnson, writer
Roger Marshall and stunt-double Cyd Child
Bonus Series 6
episode “The Forget-Me-Knot” – Emma Peel’s final story and the
introduction of Tara King
“K Is For Kill”
– excerpt from The New Avengers episode featuring appearances by
Emma Peel
ARCHIVAL
MATERIAL
Armchair Theatre episode “The
Hothouse” starring Diana Rigg (the performance that led to Rigg’s casting
as Emma Peel in The Avengers
Chessboard
Opening Title sequence used on US broadcasts for Series 4
German and
French title sequences
Series 4 UK
Commercial Break Bumper slates
Alternative
titles / credits / end tag of select Series 4 episodes
Series 4
Commercial Break Bumpers
Production trims
from select Series 5 episodes
“The Strange
Case Of The Missing Corpse” – Series 5 teaser film
German
television interview with Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg by Joachim
Fuchsberger
Colourisation
test footage for “Death At Bargain Prices” and “A Touch Of Brimstone”
Reconstructed
John Stamp Series 4 trailer
“They’re Back”
Trailers, Series 5 Trailer and Series 5 German Cinema Trailer
Extensive Photo
Galleries from the studio archives
1973 Interview
with Diana Rigg discussing her US sitcom Diana, and leaving The
Avengers
Original Aspect
Ratio 1.33:1, b&w / colour
Audio English
LPCM 2.0 Mono
English
subtitles for the Hard of Hearing (Series 4 & 5 episodes only)
BONUS
DISC 1: ADDITIONAL SPECIAL FEATURES
More interviews
from “THE AVENGERS AT 50” including composer Laurie Johnson, writer
and guest actor Jeremy Burnham, stunt-double Cyd Child, and a
screenwriters’ panel discussion featuring Brian Clemens, Richard Harris,
Richard Bates and Terrance Dicks
“Brian Clemens
In Conversation” – on-stage interview at the British Film Institute in
London discussing his early writing career
Extensive Photo
Gallery from The Avengers Fashion Show
Diana Rigg Photo
Gallery
BONUS
DISC 2: THE ORIGINAL EPISODES FILE
Featuring the 4
original episodes from the Cathy Gale era of the series which were remade
in Series 5: “Death Of A Great Dane”, “Don’t Look Behind You”, “Dressed To
Kill” and “The Charmers” (Standard Definition)
Audio Commentary
by writer Roger Marshall on “Death Of A Great Dane”
Audio Commentary
by actress Honor Blackman and UK presenter Paul O’Grady on “Don’t Look
Behind You”
Filmed
introduction by Patrick Macnee and Honor Blackman to “Don’t Look Behind
You”
“Tunnel Of Fear”
– a full-length, previously lost episode from Series 1, recovered in 2016
“THE AVENGERS
AT 50” – interview with Honor Blackman by Paul O’Grady
Click here for full details and to order. (Price is in Australian dollars.)
Anne
Francis was director John Sturges’ only female actor in 1955’s “Bad Day at
Black Rock”, and she repeated her solo act ten years later on “The Satan Bug”.
But on that production, she and many cast members felt a preoccupation, a
distance, from the man who held together “The Magnificent Seven” and “The Great
Escape”. Francis was certain “He was thinking about “The Hallelujah Trail”.
This was Sturges’ next production, his entry into the world of roadshow
presentations; a mammoth production with a huge cast and even huger backdrop:
Gallup, New Mexico.
Bill Gulick’s 1963 novel, originally titled “The Hallelujah Train”, seemed a
perfect story to upend all western movie conventions, with the cavalry, the
Indians, the unions, and the Temperance Movement fighting over the
transportation of forty wagons of whiskey. Sturges was comfortable making westerns,
but this was a comedy western. He appreciated the Mirisch Corporation’s vision
of straight actors trying to make sense of the silliness, but still wanted to
persuade James Garner, Lee Marvin and Art Carney for major roles. Sturges knew
these actors could handle comedy.
Garner
passed. “The premise was too outrageous, not enough truth to be funny”, he
said. The rest of Sturges’ dream cast was not available, but what he got seemed
attractive: a pair of solid supporting actors, Jim Hutton and Pamela Tiffin,
and Lee Remick and Burt Lancaster for the leads. Lancaster had previously
worked with Sturges on “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” and was impressed how the
film turned out. The rest of the supporting cast included Donald Pleasence,
Brian Keith, and Martin Landau. They were in for a tough shoot.
The
weather was unpredictable (you can spot thunderstorms heading their way in the
finished film) and the location had three hundred crew members miles away from
the hotels. Scenes contained countless stunts, and fifty tons of Fuller’s earth
was blown by several giant fans to create The Battle at Whiskey Hills. Bruce
Surtees, son of Sturges’ cinematographer Robert Surtees and focus-puller on the
set, recalled “All this and we’re shooting in Ultra-Panavision 70mm, which made
life even more difficult!” Despite the difficulties, the director was loving
what he saw on set; the film looked as breathtaking as any wide screen western
ever could, the stunts were amazing, and thank God he was also laughing all
through it.
The
hilarity was cut short near the end of the shooting. For the sprawling wagon
chase finale, stunt persons Buff Brady and Bill Williams convinced associate
producer Robert Relyea to let them delay their jump from inside a catapulted
coach. Permission was given, and in the attempt, Williams got tangled somehow
during his planned escape. He was killed instantly. Relyea nixed including the footage in the finished film, but was overruled by
Mirisch. It’s an incredible shot and it plays in every promotional trailer, probably the
most famous footage from the production. Was including it a bad decision or a
tribute? There is still a debate over this among retro movie fans.
“We
all thought it was going to be a hit picture”, said Sturges, “until we hit an
audience.” “The Hallelujah Trail” opened with a 165-minute cut that audiences and critics
found “belabored and overlong”. Sturges overheard some patrons wondering if
this was a straight western or a deliberate comedy. Screenwriter John Gay
blamed much of the response on the performances of Brian Keith and Donald Pleasence.
Gay wanted his lines played straight but the actors played it for laughs. The
film was soon cut to 156-minutes (the version on this Blu-ray) and the
reactions were much more positive; critics noted several inspired sight gags,
audiences enjoyed the cartoonish atmosphere of the DePatie-Freleng maps,
Variety found the film “beautifully packaged”, and the LA Times proclaimed “The
Hallelujah Trail” as “one of the very few funny westerns ever made, and
possibly the funniest.”
When the film finished its roadshow run, United Artists cut the film once more,
to 145-minutes. It didn’t help. Compared to “Cat Ballou” and even “F Troop”,
“The Hallelujah Trail” was unhip.Sturges
was done with comedy, but not with roadshow Cinerama, though his future films would have checkered histories. He was set to direct
“Grand Prix” but clashed with the original star, Steve McQueen. A year later
Gregory Peck turned down Sturges’ “Ice Station Zebra’, wary of its weak third
act. Rock Hudson, now middle-aged and wanting a strong lead role, came aboard
for this Sturges voyage instead. The MGM release still had a confusing third
act, but the film sails nicely mostly due to Patrick McGoohan and some clever
dialogue.
Decades
later, “The Hallelujah Trail” remains a nice memory to those who attended the
Cinerama presentation; not much greatness to retain but a great experience at
the movies. But that experience was tough to relive because the film remained
in legacy format limbo for years: a letterboxed standard definition transfer.
So when Olive Films announced a Blu-ray release in 2019, fans of comedy epics
sung Hallelujah! Now this film can be viewed in 1080P! Retreat! Unfortunately, the quality of the Olive release resembled an upscaled version of the original standard
definition transfer. But two years later “The Hallelujah Trail” was casually
spotted on Amazon Prime, and it was a new HD transfer. And a year after that,
it’s a new Kino Lorber Blu-ray release.
(Above: Dell U.S. comic book tie-in.)
Any
Cinema-Retro reader worth their Cinerama Chops should have this Blu-ray in
their collection. “The Hallelujah Trail” is an hour too long, but you get miles
of lovely landscape. My favorite portrayal? Donald Pleasence as Oracle, who predicts the future in
return for free drinks. And watch for his amazing jump off a roof! Certainly,
the most impressive part of the film is the finale: the runaway wagon chase.
There are sections where you swear it’s Remick, Keith and Landau handling those
coaches but you know it has to be well made-up stunt people, at least for most
of it. You’re also realizing that this sequence, and perhaps the entire film,
is performed without any process work or rear projection.
There’s a legitimate debate on how the film may have been more successful if
James Garner played the role of Colonel Gearhart, though only Lancaster could
have pulled off that bathtub smile scene. There’s no disagreement on the music;
Elmer Bernstein’s sprawling score contains so many themes that Sturges’
biographer Glenn Lovell qualifies the film as “almost a pre-“Paint Your Wagon”
musical." And here’s your tiniest “Trail”
trivia: decades ago, during the production
of the laserdisc version, MGM/UA discovered that a few reels were mono sound
instead of multi-channel, including the main title featuring the chorus. Yours
truly was working on a project for the company at the time, and I happily lent
them my stereo score LP. so the main title would be in stereo. That audio track
mix remains on this new Blu-ray as well. (You’re welcome, America!)
Kino
Lorber is kind enough to provide some expert guides to help you along the “Trail”:
the perfect pairing of screenwriter C. Courtney Joyner and filmmaker/historian
Michael Schlesinger. Joyner had already provided his Sturges bonafides with his
documentary on the director for the recent Imprint Blu-ray of “Marooned”, and I
can verify Schlesinger’s knowledge of film comedy, having been fortunate to
join him, along with Mark Evanier, for the commentary track on Criterion’s
“It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”. Joyner and Schlesinger tackle and
acknowledge “The Hallelujah Trail”s social and political incorrectness, but
also deflate any virtue signaling by examining how the film is smartly an equal
opportunity offender: the Cavalry, the Indians, the Temperance Movement, all up
for farce. Thanks to this team, and the picture quality of this Blu-ray, I
finally spotted the gag of the Indians circling the wagons as the cavalry is
whooping and hollering. Both gents are in a fine fun mood to tackle this type
of film, and It’s one of my favorite film commentaries of 2022.
“The
Hallelujah Trail” now looks clearer and sharper than any previous home video
release, and somehow it makes the comedy and the performances sharper as well.
I think you’ll be entertained by this roadshow epic, and with Joyner and
Schlesinger as your commentary companions you may indeed learn, as the posters
proclaimed, “How the West Was Fun!”
The
late Ingmar Bergman lived and worked on the Swedish island of Fårö, where he filmed many of his stark masterpieces such as Persona,
Shame, and others. He had more than one house on the island, and the
population there protected the filmmaker’s privacy with the fervor of a
national guard.
Today, though, his estate is run by a
foundation that allows artist-in-residency grants to writers, filmmakers,
musicians, and painters, as well as activists working for free speech and
democratic ideals. One merely has to submit an application at a specific time
of year, and if one is lucky, grants/permissions are doled out to several
people per year. The person gets to stay free of charge at one of Bergman’s
abodes and work on a designated project (it doesn’t have to be related to
Bergman or film) as long as some “contribution” is made to the community in
terms of a cultural event. (For those interested, see https://bergmangardarna.se/application/.)
French filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve
uses this residency gift as a setting for a sensitive romantic drama that
explores the relationship between art and real life, as well as the muses and
inspirations that drive artists in their work. Bergman Island also
displays in lovely cinematographic intimacy (shot by DP Denis Lenoir) the
grounds of Bergman’s homes, which is, in itself, an absolute treat for any
viewer who is a fan of the master’s movies. Note that although the film is
mostly a French production set in Sweden, it is 95% in English. Some Swedish
residents on the island speak in their native tongue and are subtitled.
Tony
(Tim Roth) is an established filmmaker who has received a grant of residency to
stay at Bergman’s Dämba property to work on writing his next
project. Accompanying him is his wife, Chris (Vicky Krieps), also a writer, who
has a work in progress but is experiencing writer’s block. Chris turns out to
be the protagonist of the film, and the story is told from her perspective. There
are cracks in the marriage, mainly because Chris feels that Tony doesn’t give
her enough support or encouragement (but from what the viewer sees on the
screen, this isn’t entirely true; nevertheless, Tony does tend to take phone
calls in the middle of deep conversations and is easily distracted by what is
apparently a major film production he’s working on). Ironically, they’re
staying in the bedroom where Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage was shot.
The housekeeper tells them that the film was so popular that millions of
couples around the world “got a divorce” because of it!
The
couple, usually separately, take in sightseeing excursions on the island to
Bergman’s other abodes and the film center where Tony delivers a talk. There is
even a “Bergman Safari” bus that takes visitors around the island to film
locations and such (and all this is real).
Chris
finally relates to Tony the story she’s been struggling with so far. The movie
then becomes a “film within a film,” illustrating Chris’ story, which involves
Amy (Mia Wasikowska), a filmmaker, and a former lover, Joseph (Anders Danielsen
Lie), both of whom are attending a wedding of mutual friends on Fårö. Mia and Joseph rekindle their love affair, and Mia
would like for it to go further, but apparently Joseph considers the fling to
be temporary. Interestingly, people that Tony and Chris have met during their
stay on the island are transported into Mia and Joseph’s story, so there is
cross pollination of ideas between the “real” tale and the “fictional” tale.
Bergman Island is told in a leisurely, dreamlike fashion that emphasizes
the pastoral influence of the surroundings on the characters. There is also the
strong (but unseen and unheard) presence of Ingmar Bergman’s ghost, who informs
all the characters’ motivations. Tony and Chris are told that the late
filmmaker believed in ghosts—for example, Bergman was firmly convinced that his
late wife occupied the house with him after she had departed the earth. Thus,
the ghosts of their own pasts are ever present in the lives of Tony, Chris,
Amy, and Joseph. That said, the movie is not a Bergman homage or
pastiche. Its style and tone is much gentler and more feminine.
The Criterion Collection has issued a
top-notch package containing a 2K digital master of the movie, approved by the
director, with a 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack. The colors of Fårö in summer are a striking contrast to the black and white
imagery of the locations in Bergman’s 1960s and 70s pictures. Berman Island is
indeed lovely to look at it.
The supplements include a lengthy
interview with director Hansen- Løve in which she speaks about the history of
the film, its casting issues (originally Greta Gerwig and John Turturro were to
have played the roles of Chris and Tony), and the power of the island location
on the choices she made for the picture; an interview with Vicky Krieps; and a
short behind-the-scenes documentary shot by cast member Gabe Klinger during the
production. The booklet contains an essay by film critic Devika Girish.
Bergman
Island is
a fascinating and meaningful little picture that is worth one’s time,
especially for fans of the late Ingmar Bergman. Recommended.
The most memorable aspect of "Who is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?" is its title, which still resonates with people of a certain age even though most probably never saw the film itself. "Harry" was a speed bump in Dustin Hoffman's meteoric rise to success that began with "The Graduate" in 1967 and continued with such diverse hits as "Midnight Cowboy", "Little Big Man" and "Straw Dogs" (which would be released a few months after "Harry"). Directed by Ulu Grosbard, who would direct Hoffman in the acclaimed drama "Straight Time" seven years later, "Harry" is a bizarre comedy with an anti-Establishment social message. Hoffman, almost unrecognizable behind a mustache and curly hair, plays Georgie Soloway, a "Boy Wonder" in the music business for his ability to almost instantly write hit rock and folk songs, along with memorable advertising jingos. He has fame and fortune and resides in luxurious penthouse apartment in Manhattan that is a virtual museum to his own accomplishments. However, the affable Georgie is desperately lacking something in his life: genuine friendships and a loving, significant other. The film doesn't follow a linear path and bounces around between various stages of Georgie's life. We see him growing up in Brooklyn, the only child of two stereotypical, overbearing Jewish parents. As a teenager, Georgie goes through the customary stages of trying to deal with raging hormones. He and a friendly but air-headed girl become lovers but he cruelly ditches her when she becomes pregnant. Later we see he had married when he impregnated another woman who bore him two children. Georgie ended up deserting them as well because he couldn't deal with the adult responsibilities that fatherhood demands. We see present-day Georgie having no problems finding bedmates but he realizes he only attracts women because of his fame and fortune. Every time he seems to enter a promising relationship it is compromised when the woman is contacted by a mysterious man who calls himself Harry Kellerman and who seems to know all the intimate aspects of Georgie's life. Kellerman routinely unveils to these women the sordid ways Georgie has treated previous lovers and inevitably, his new relationships fail. When we first see Georgie, he is a psychological basket case. He fantasizes about suicide as though it will be a charming and pleasant experience. He also desperately tries to forge genuine friendships with those in his life. For years he has been paying a psychiatrist (Jack Warden) to hear his problems and act as a surrogate father figure to him but it becomes clear the man only sees Georgie as another client. Similarly, Georgie's outreach to his business manager (Gabriel Dell) and his harried accountant (Dom DeLuise) fails to result in establishing anything but business relationships. Georgie is the ultimate poor little rich boy. Much of the story line finds Georgie increasingly infuriated by Kellerman's interference in his love life and becoming obsessed with finding out who he is and how he knows so much about him.
The film was written by Herb Gardner, best known for his play "A Thousand Clowns", which was also about a dysfunctional New York man, who- like Georgie- was superficially charming but not very admirable. Gardner's screenplay drifts back and forth through time at a dizzying pace and sometimes it's hard to know whether we are viewing Georgie in the past or present. He also includes sequences that are genuinely bizarre but are later revealed to be dreams or fantasies. The end result is a rather unsatisfying mix of comedy and pathos despite fine performances by everyone involved. Director Grosbard makes scant use of the New York locations, other than some earlier scenes representing Coney Island in the 1950s and one fantasy scene that finds Georgie inside either the Holland or Lincoln Tunnel, which is totally deserted (trying filming that today). There are also some wonderful aerial shots of the city as we watch the bored Georgie pilot his personal jet for joy rides. But Grosbard never captures the flavor of New York and film could just have easily been set in any major city. The movie is primarily shot in dark interiors with grim lighting, making for a suitably depressing experience. The message of the movie seems to be that money can't buy happiness and that personal virtues are more important than a large bank account. This may be true but it wasn't exactly a unique theory even in 1971. The film comes alive mostly in its final phase when Georgie meets an untalented aspiring singer (Barbara Harris, superb in an Oscar-nominated performance) who is ditzy but lovable. She brings out the kind of genuine human emotion that Georgie had been suppressing for most of his life- but is it too late to save him from his own demons? The final scene of the movie sees Georgie finally seeming to find happiness as he soars above the boroughs of New York City in a wonderfully-filmed sequence that comes to an unexpected conclusion, even as it provides an answer to the question "Who is Harry Kellerman?"
Kino Lorber has released the film on Blu-ray sans any special features other than a trailer for Ulu Grosbard's 1981 drama "True Confessions". The transfer is very good indeed but can't overcome the deficiencies in the film itself. "Harry Kellerman" isn't a bad film and it does provide the joy of seeing another fine performance by young Dustin Hoffman. But it is a movie that falls far short of its aspirations and at times comes across as merely pretentious.
In case you were wondering, the answer is “yes.”That is Christopher Lee’s visage featured on
the slipcase of Kino Lorber’s Blu ray issue of Vernon Sewell’s The Blood Beast Terror.Now, ordinarily, displaying Sir Christopher’s
image on a Gothic horror film release wouldn’t make for bad marketing.The problem is that Lee doesn’t actually appear in The Blood Beast Terror.The
team at Kino curiously chose to use the poster art of Distribuzione Italiana
Films Internazionali, the distributor readying the film for European release as
the Mostro di Sangue.
The artwork procured by D.I.F.I. for The Blood Beast Terror was, at the very least, familiar: a reverse-image
lifted from the Italian poster of 1958’s Horror
of Dracula (Dracula il Vampiro).Kino is taking a fair battering on fan sites
for their packaging of this 2022 issue.But let’s be fair. Kino’s decision to forego the original British poster
art for the imagery of the Italian campaign might be a bit odd but not technically incorrect.Moviegoers in Italy had, in fact, been lured
into visiting their local cinema with such eye-catching - if misleading -
artwork.
Though Tigon’s The
Blood Beast Terror has a core of supporters – perhaps defenders is a better term - I find the film a mild amusement at
best.Which is a shame as I really want to like it. In a sense, it’s a film conceived from a time
out of mind.Some critics suggest that’s
exactly the film’s failing.Upon UK release
in the early spring of 1968, stately Gothic horrors were seemingly growing
stale amongst horror film fans.Critics
argued a new era of more edgy, sadistic and blood-letting horrors was in the
ascendant, old costume-drama gothics now too tame to frighten.While that’s not necessarily untrue, there’s
no denying The Blood Beast Terror is of
middling interest simply due to it not being terribly involving.
While it’s true goth-horror had lost some of its courtly appeal
with a large sect of cinemagoers, the sub-genre was hardly dead.A case in point: upon original release The Blood Beast Terror was paired as the
undercard to Michael Reeve’s brilliant Witchfinder
General, a film set circa 1645. This too was a Tigon release of Tony
Tenser’s, a Vincent Price vehicle far superior to The Blood Beast Terror on every conceivable level.I might be wrong, but I suspect if not for
the presence of Peter Cushing in The
Blood Beast Terror, Sewell’s more modest film would have far fewer
champions than it enjoys today.
So what’s wrong with it?I admit to moments of melancholia when watching The Blood Beast Terror.For
starters, it’s difficult to watch old pros Cushing and Robert Flemyng (known
best to horror film fans as the titular necrophagic M.D. The Horrible Dr. Hichcock) try their best to rise above the
mediocre material they’ve been given to work with. The film’s Director of
Photography, Stanley Long, recalled Flemyng complaining “how shit the script
was, how shit the effects were.”Even director
Sewell wasn’t spared the castigations of an unhappy cast member.He recalled the famously gentlemanly Cushing mildly
offering only a couple of days into the shoot, “Vernon, I think this is perhaps
the worst film I have ever made.” Sadly, in a few years’ time there would be new
challengers to Cushing’s lament.Such
clunkers as Tendre Dracula (1974) and
Blood Suckers (1971) would prove short
term contenders to that particular title.
I won’t give away anything important about the film’s
flimsy plot – just in case you’ve yet to see the film and still wish to after
reading this review.I’ll just say the
trail of mutilated bodies scattering the English countryside are – as ever –
the result of bad science gone horribly wrong.In this case entomological science.As transformative feminine-insect monsters go, Wanda Ventham’s fetching “Clare”
in The Blood Beast Terror is, IMHO, a
far less interesting or menacing creature than Susan Cabot’s “Janice Starlin” in
Roger Corman’s low-budget The Wasp Woman
(1959).But, again, the fault here lies
not with Ventham or Cushing or Flemyng, but with a script riddled with excessive
verbiage and slow-moving, sluggish plotting.
Bigfoot
was all the rage in the 1970s and it seemed as though you could not look
anywhere without hearing about it. Alternately known as “Sasquatch”, Bigfoot is
the description given to a large, man-sized hirsute creature reputed to live in
the woods in the Pacific Northwest section of the United States. There have
been many “sightings” over the years of this creature, with many people
claiming they have photographed and even encountered it. The Loch Ness Monster
off the coast of Scotland was yet another subject of mystification and intrigue which rebounded in popularity
during the 1970s.
As
a youngster, I recall not fully giving credence to the notion that this
“monster” really existed but also being unnerved by the myriad docudramas that
attempted to explain or hint at some sense of veracity when it came to
discussing the subject. My favorite show at the time, The Six Million Dollar
Man, pitted the titular hero Steve Austin (Lee Majors) against Bigfoot (an
unrecognizable André René Roussimoff, better known as André the Giant) in early
1976, with its less successfully sister show, The Bionic Woman, continuing
the storyline later that year, with Ted Cassidy now all dolled up for a fight. Leonard
Nimoy’s episode of In Search Of…, which aired in New York on Monday, January
31, 1977, explored the possibility of the creature’s existence. Three months
later we were subjected to the TV-movie Snowbeast, a fun film about patrons
at a ski resort being terrorized by a rampaging killer beast, essentially Jaws
set in the snow. Bigfoot even became a humorous throwaway line by Roberts
Blossom in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, also
from 1977.
In
addition to docudramas, there have also been a good number of films about
Bigfoot coming into contact with humans, but the results are never pretty. Joy
N. Houck Jr.’s Creature from Black Lake (1976) is one of those
low-budget, independently lensed thrillers that made the rounds throughout the
Midwest but never seemed to make it to larger markets such as Los Angeles,
Chicago or New York. Filmed during September and October of 1975 and released regionally
on Friday, March 12, 1976, Creature begins with an image that could have
just as easily been pulled from the ending of John Hancock’s Let’s Scare
Jessica to Death (1971) but gives way to two fishermen (one of whom is
character actor Jack Elam) in a motorboat in the Louisiana swamps. The younger
of the two gets pulled into the water by a creature that is mostly heard rather
than actually seen. Meanwhile, two graduate students, Pahoo (Dennis Fimple) and
Rives (John David Carson) head to Louisiana to look into the existence of this
mysterious creature in the hopes of getting townspeople to talk. Joe Canton
(Jack Elam, who I first saw in the ill-fated TV show Struck by Lightning,
which co-starred Jeffrey Kramer, in September 1979) opens up about it in his
own crazed way. However, Sheriff Billy Carter (Bill Thurman) not only refuses
to speak about the subject but admonishes the students to leave.
Grandpa
Bridges (lovable Dub Taylor) is another community member who is initially
reticent about the creature since it terrified his wife. However, when money is
waved in front of his face, he has a change of heart and permits the students
to break bread with his family. All is well until Pahoo’s parapraxis sends Mrs.
Bridges into a frenzy, incurring Grandpa’s wrath and sending them on their way
to investigate on their own.
Dismissed
by most critics at the time, Creature is an entertaining film that
benefits immensely from stellar camerawork by future John Carpenter alumni Dean
Cundey. The film has never been properly represented outside of a theater
before having been shot anamorphically but cropped for its New York television
premiere on CBS after midnight on Friday, November 30, 1979, while later finding
its way into syndication on channel 9 in New York in the early 1980s. Unless
you were one of the folks who caught up with the film under these circumstances
or through one of its several DVD releases, the best way to see it now is on
the excellent Blu-ray from Synapse Films which is mastered from a 4K scan of
the original camera negative, a vast improvement over all previous airings and
releases.
There
is a feature-length audio commentary with writer Michael Gingold and film
historian Chris Poggiali. They expound upon the film’s merits and detriments and
speak enthusiastically about both the movie and the Bigfoot subgenre. Both men
are erudite and articulate and it makes for an entertaining and informative
listen.
There
is also a 19-minute extra called Swamp Stories with Director of Photography
Dean Cundey which is exactly what it says it is. If you are interested in
Mr. Cundey’s background and a discussion of the technical aspects of the production,
this piece is very interesting.
Lastly,
we have the theatrical trailer and the radio spot!
Oh,
how the radio spots for horror films freaked me out when I was a kid!
A
very cool package indeed, topped off with reallynice cover art by the late
great Star Wars alumni Ralph McQuarrie.
In the autumn of 1963 the Macmillan Co. published Rohan
O’ Grady’s third suspense novel Let’s
Kill Uncle.The book’s appearance
was certain to command some critical and public notice: the dust jacket and
title page was adorned with the idiosyncratic illustrations of Edward Gorey.The cover blurb offered a small glimpse of
what awaited readers:“In an idyllic, peaceful island setting two
charming children on summer holiday conspire to execute the perfect murder –
and get away with it.”Though a
macabre premise, the book was well-received, the Baltimore Sun, Boston Globe,
Pittsburgh Press, New York Newsday and Chicago Tribune singing its praises.Toronto’s Globe
and Mail crowed Let’s Kill Uncle was
“the jolliest thriller of any year.”
One fan of the novel was the producer-director William
Castle, the undisputed grifting King of Ballyhoo.Castle optioned the property shortly after its
appearance with no immediate plans for production set.After scoring handsomely with his 1959 indie House on Haunted Hill with Vincent
Price, Castle had signed on with Columbia Pictures for a four-film deal in
March of 1959 (later extended beyond the original four pics). Between 1959 and
1964 Castle delivered such popcorn-munching guilty-pleasures as The Tingler, 13 Ghosts, Mr. Sardonicus,
and Strait-Jacket, amongst others.Then, in October 1963, Universal Picture’s
Vice-President of Production, Edward Muhl, signed Castle to a three-picture
deal for a series of “cost-control” films.
Castle’s trio of films for Uni were less celebrated and
money-spinning than his earlier efforts.His second and most recent effort for the studio, I Saw What You Did (1965) did little to buffer his reputation as a
filmmaker nor cash-cow guarantor.As one
critic from the Los AngelesTimes sulked, “I Saw What You Did,
William Castle, and as usual I am not impressed.”Castle’s final film in his three-pic contract
would be Let’s Kill Uncle.By all indicators, the production of Let’s Kill Uncle would be a rushed
affair.One Hollywood correspondent –
having already visited director Brian G. Hutton rehearsing his cast on the set of
The Pad – chose to drop by the
adjourning soundstage where first-day shooting of Let’s Kill Uncle was in process.The columnist was quick to note the film’s “rough edges” were already
showing.The writer noted the fast and frugal
Castle had already shot more film during his brief visit than Hutton would
shoot in an entire day.
Castle had reason to work quickly.In October of 1965, Variety reported the director/producer was soon to again jump ship,
having just inked a multi-picture deal with Paramount.That contract called for Castle to report to
his new bosses on New Year’s Day 1966.Though
Castle was scheduled to begin work on Let’s
Kill Uncle on December 10, 1965, actual production evidently would not
commence until December 20.The clock
was ticking.
One reason for the delay was Castle’s decision to wait on
the availability of “moppet Mary Badham,” the child actress cast as “Chrissie”
in the film.The thirteen-year old was
not yet finished completing work on Sydney Pollack’s drama This Property is Condemned with Natalie Wood, Robert Redford and
Charles Bronson.Another
thirteen-year-old, Pat Cardi, was to join the cast as Barnaby Harrison, the
principal target of his black-hearted Uncle, Major Kevin Harrison (Nigel
Green).Though Cardi’s name was a mostly
unfamiliar one, his face certainly was.The child actor was frequently seen on television screens in a cavalcade
of small roles.Linda Lawson, cast to
play Chrissie’s aunt Justine, was a virtual novice looking for a break.Castle had met Lawson four years earlier when
she delivered mail to him at his Columbia Pictures office.
It’s unclear if Nigel Green was originally sought out by
Castle to play the “Uncle” role.There
were reports as late as December that Leslie Nielsen “had worked out his
shooting schedule on Beau Geste so he
can accept a role in Uncle.”If indeed Nelson was Castle’s first choice to
play the Major, the resulting film - as it stands - might have benefited from the actor’s gift for light-comedy.Whatever the case, Green – just recently seen
as another “Major” in the Len Deighton/Sidney J. Furie production of the
spy-thriller The Ipcress File (1965) –
was brought on.Green’s comedic skills
were not his strong suit, and it wasn’t the best bit of casting.But then everything about Let’s Kill Uncle seems a bit askew.
The shortcomings of this film weighed heavily on the scripting.Castle’s schedule 1963-1965 was a
particularly busy one, so it’s not surprising his optioning of Let’s Kill Uncle was not exercised immediately.In April of 1965 things started moving, Variety reporting the playwright Robert
L. Joseph had been conscripted to adapt O’ Grady’s book as a film treatment, with
tentative plans to start production sometime “next summer.”Whatever the circumstances, Joseph’s
treatment – if submitted at all – was found not up-to-snuff.The responsibility of delivering a workable
adaptation fell to Mark Rodgers, a writer almost exclusively known for his work
on television.
It was, to be fair, a tough work to adapt, as the grim
humor and dark whimsy of O’ Grady’s novel was seamlessly embroidered into a
textual tapestry – a bit of psychological chess-game plotting not easy to
convey visually.Castle chose to dispense
and/or modify many of the novels’ original elements.The setting of the novel is an island off of
the Canadian Pacific coast, there are Mounties trooping about, the treacherous
Uncle” is named “Sylvester,” and there’s even a “soliloquizing” talking cougar
named “One-Eye.”The filmmakers of Let’s Kill Uncle chose to move the
action to an un-named sub-tropical location of palm trees and bananas, there’s
no Mounties or (worse yet!) a talking cougar.The killer Uncle’s moniker was changed from Sylvester to “Kevin
Harrison.” (As has “Chrissie’s.”She’s “Christie”
in the novel).
While these small name changes don’t really figure in or
matter to the final product, the absence of “One-Eye” is unforgivable.As is the lack of suspense one might have expected.The only good thing about moving the locale
from the Canadian coast to the tropics is the welcome – if brief - appearance
of Nestor Paiva as the Steward of the steamer bringing Barnaby and Chrissie to
their new island homes.Paiva, one might
recall, was the captain of the Rita,
the ship slow-trolling the wilds of the Amazon in search of The Creature from the Black Lagoon.It’s Nestor who informs young Barnaby that the
island is cursed, which isn’t too far off the mark, at least for him.
The film never really catches fire.I was hoping to glean Castle’s thoughts on Let’s Kill Uncle in his memoir Step Right Up!I’m Gonna Scare the Pants Off America,
but the director/producer makes no mention of the film’s production nor
reception in the book.The slight filmography
in his book’s back pages gives Let’s Kill
Uncle only the briefest of notice: “Technicolor
murder movie starring kids and Nigel Green.”(It should be noted Director of Photography
Harold Lipstein delivers a film of eye-popping color saturation, the film’s
singular saving grace).
The film was mostly dismissed by critics upon its release
– but there were a few actually enjoyed it.One critic from Box Office
mulled the film’s failure was due to the “scene-chewing and downright brattish
character traits” of Cardi and Badham, that the “homicidal plans” of Uncle
Kevin might have proved “a blessing in disguise” had they been carried out.I generally like William Castle’s shoestring
1960’s psycho-horrors as much as the next guy (assuming that “next guy” also
has lowbrow tastes in cinema), but I found the ninety-two minutes of Let’s Kill Uncle a slow torture.Castle’s fans will at least enjoy the bonus featurette
Mr. Castle and Me: An Interview with
Actor Pat Cardi, which offer a small peek behind the curtain.
This Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu-ray edition of Let’s Kill Uncle is presented in 1920 x 1080p,
with a ratio of 1.85:1, dts sound, and removable English sub-titles.The film looks absolutely brilliant, Kino
having struck the print from a “Brand New 2K Master.”The set rounds off with two theatrical
trailers of the film as well as the commentaries of film historians Kat
Ellinger (Diabolique magazine) and the
(now sadly recently deceased) author of Teen
Movie Hell, Mike McPadden.
My
introduction to science fiction came in the form of George Lucas’s Star Wars
(1977), though many would argue that this initial film in the first trilogy is
a glorified western set in outer space. This was a point of view I would not
have remotely considered the following summer when my father bought me a copy
of the June 1978 issue of Space Encounters magazine featuring an article
on and, best of all, photos of this glorious space opera. Among the other films
showcased in this magazine that were new to me were Destination Moon
(1950) and The War of the Worlds (1953), the latter of which was depicted
in beautiful color, filling me with intrigue. When I think of science fiction
now, the images of Douglas Trumbull’s slow-moving spaceships gliding through
space in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and the
mothership landing near Devil’s Tower in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters
of the Third Kind (1977), or the dystopian landscape of Los Angeles in
Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), come to mind. Back then, however, the
effects were a lot more primitive but no less effective to a child’s eyes: something
about the way these creepy-looking, Manta-shaped Martian ships with cobra-like
heads that fire a deadly heat ray capable of incinerating just about anything
in its path unnerved me. It is this film that is now available from Paramount
Home Video in a gorgeous new 4K UHD Blu-ray, in a double feature set of two
discs that also includes a standard Blu-ray of 1951’s When Worlds Collide,
clearly the lesser of the two films.
Dr.
Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry) is an atomic scientist who gets more than he
bargains for when he stumbles upon a heated object that has crash-landed
nearby. At the impact site, he meets Sylvia Van Buren (Ann Robinson) and her
pastor uncle, all confused by the scene before them. Later, Martian ships
emerge from the site, and it is reported that similar scenarios are playing out
in other parts of the country. The United States military finds their weapons (even
atomic bombs!) to be of no use against the Martian invaders who employ the use
of the heat rays. Clayton and Sylvia make their way to a farmhouse and
encounter a strange looking electronic eye that the Martians use to investigate
the premises, but Clayton hacks off the electronic eye and manages to collect a
blood sample from the arm of a wounded Martian that we only see briefly. Their
blood proves to be the key to understanding them, as well as their undoing: Earth’s
bacteria is too much for the Martians and their supposed invincibility no
longer is an issue when then germs bring about their demise.
The
War of the Worlds has
been around for over one hundred years in various forms, beginning life in the
late 1890’s as a multi-part story published in Cosmopolitan if you can
believe it, then as a novel and, most famously, as a notorious radio broadcast emceed
by Orson Welles on the night before Halloween in 1938 that led to mass panic by
those listeners unfortunate enough to miss not only the program’s beginning
disclaimer, but the three mid-broadcast announcements emphasizing the play’s
fictional nature. Listeners actually believed it to be a real news broadcast!
The film opened in New York on Thursday, August 13, 1953 at the Mayfair on 7th
and Broadway on a panoramic screen with stereophonic sound. It was nominated
for three Academy Awards: Film Editing, Sound Recording, and won by default for
Special Effects on Thursday, March 25, 1954 because no other film was in the
category. Steven Spielberg directed a
very effective interpretation of this material following the 9/11 attacks; that
version was released in the summer of 2005 and featured Gene Barry and Ann
Robinson as Tom Cruise’s in-laws at the film’s end (love it!).
The
new 4K Ultra High-Definition release contains the following extras that have
been ported over from the 2005 Paramount DVD of the film:
There
is a wonderful, feature-length audio commentary with Gene Barry and Ann Robinson.
There
is a secondary audio commentary with Joe Dante, Bob Burns, and Bill Warren
which is very funny, anecdotal and engaging.
The
Sky is Falling: Making The War of the Worlds (SD – 29:59)
H.G.
Wells: The Father of Science Fiction
(SD – 10:29)
The
Mercury Theater on the Air Presets: The War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast from
1938 (HD – 59:30)
Original
Theatrical Trailer (HD – 2:20)
When
Worlds Collide (1951),
released in New York on Wednesday, February 6, 1952 at the Globe on 46th
and Broadway, depicts the effects of a mob mentality when word gets out that
scientists have accurately predicted the end of the world but are shrugged off
as crackpot theorists. Dr. Cole Hendron (Larry Keating) is given photographs
from a pilot, David Randall (Richard Derr), who has taken them on the sly.
Along with his daughter Joyce Hendron (Barbara Rush), Dr. Hendron’s fears
become a reality. A star by the name of Bellus is on a collision course with
Earth and disaster is only eight months away, proving that aside from one’s own
personal health the most important asset a human can possess is time. Young,
healthy, and attractive people are singled out to make a future trip to a
planet, Zyra, that is travelling in Bellus’s orbit for purposes of continuing
the Human Race. First, however, a spaceship needs to be constructed to do this.
Along the way, Joyce has to choose between her boyfriend Dr. Tony Drake (Peter
Hansen) and her attraction to Randall while a wheelchair-bound wealthy
businessman, Sidney Stanton (John Hoyt), demands to be saved in exchange for
money and also wants the right to choose who goes on the ship. A mad dash is
made to build the ship (other countries around the world follow suit) and
miraculously the feat is pulled off in record time. Just as August 12th
arrives, the doubting Stanton berates the doomsday predictors until the world
begins crumbling around them. He tries fruitlessly to make it to the ship until
the door closes and it leaves Earth’s atmosphere, rocketing itself to Zyra,
where the passengers make a smooth landing and are greeted with the prospect of
a new life.
Both
of these films are the brainchild of György Pál Marczincsak, better known as
George Pal, who is also known to American audiences for his earlier colorful Puppetoons
films, and the charming 1950 Jimmy Durante-Terry Moore outing The Great
Rupert (1950). He would go on to direct Russ Tamblyn in both Tom Thumb
(1958) and The Wonderful World of The Brothers Grimm (1962), the latter
in Cinemarama.
The
War of the Worlds was
released on standard Blu-ray in 2020 on the Criterion Collection which had features different from the one provided here.
Likewise, When Worlds Collide was released in a now out-of-print special
edition from Imprint that included a handful of extras, although the sole extra
on this Blu-ray is the film’s trailer.
Recommended
for died-hard Pal fans!
Click here to order the limited edition release from Amazon
There
are two types of people in the world, and I don’t refer to young and old, rich
and poor, or me and everybody else.The
divide I have in mind is wider and deeper.On one side are those who would rather chew broken glass than watch Hollywood’s
old costume dramas about noble knights, evil viziers, and beautiful Tahitian
princesses.On the other side are those
like me who enjoy such fare in the same way we gravitate to Mac ’n Cheese and
other comfort food.It’s a soothing
callback to our childhoods when we devoured such movies on TV and the big
screen, in less strident and less cynical times—at least, they were less
strident and less cynical if you were ten years old.In the 1940s, two of the reigning luminaries
of the genre were Maria Montez and Jon Hall, who starred together in six
Technicolor productions for Universal Pictures, 1942-45.Three of the films have been released by Kino
Lorber Studio Classics on one disc, the “Maria Montez and Jon Hall Collection.”If you haven’t had occasion to discover what
movie escapism looked like in the era before today’s Middle Earth, planet
Tatooine, and Wakanda, the Montez/Hall triple feature provides a good
introduction.
In
“White Savage” (1943) directed by Arthur Lubin from an early script by future
Academy Award winning writer-director Richard Brooks, commercial fisherman
Kaloe (Hall) wants to harvest sharks off mysterious Temple Island.Health enthusiasts will pay well for shark
liver, “a great source of Vitamin A,” he says, sounding like today’s late-nite
pitchmen for dubious dietary supplements.After a meet-cute scene that wouldn’t be out of place in a 2022 romantic
comedy, the island’s ruler, Princess Tahia (Montez), falls for the handsome
adventurer and grants him access to the waters, only to turn against him later
when she’s duped by Sam Miller (Thomas Gomez), the sleazy owner of a gambling
den in nearby Port Coral.Miller has
learned that the titular temple on Temple Island includes a golden pool inlaid
with jewels.To plunder the treasure, he
first has to get Kaloe out of the way.Given Kaloe’s name, we assume that the shark hunter is Polynesian (Hall,
born Charles Felix Locher, was said to have had a Tahitian mother in real
life), but he wears a generic charter-captain outfit and skipper’s cap, not a
sarong.Montez, born Maria Gracia Vidal in a well to do Colombian family,
doesn’t look any more Polynesian than Hall.But old movies like this are more notable for oddball charm than
authenticity.This becomes even more
apparent when you think about a golden, gem-encrusted pool in the South Seas.Where did the gold and the jewels come
from?It’s further underlined when
Kaloe, framed by Miller for murder, is imprisoned on a platform guarded below
by African lions.Why not polar
bears?Not that audiences in 1943 would have
cared, as long as dad could ogle Maria Montez in vivid Technicolor, mom could
dream about Jon Hall, and the kids could identify with third-billed Sabu as
Kaloe’s mischievous younger sidekick, Orano.
“Gypsy
Wildcat” (1944) shifts locale to medieval Europe, exactly the kind of setting
and story parodied by Rob Reiner’s beloved 1987 comedy “The Princess Bride,” minus
Billy Crystal and Andre the Giant.When
a traveler is murdered near the castle of ruthless Baron Tovar (Douglas
Dumbrille), Tovar imprisons a band of Gypsies camped nearby.The Gypsies harbor another stranger, Michael
(Hall), who witnessed the murder and holds an important item of evidence sought
by the baron.The caravan’s dancing
girl, Carla (Montez), an orphan who was adopted by the Gypsies at infancy,
falls in love with Michael, to the displeasure of the Gypsy chief’s son, Tonio
(Peter Coe), who had hoped to marry her.Tovar, in turn, is smitten with Carla, who looks uncannily like a woman
in an old portrait that hangs in his private quarters.Well toward the end of the movie, the
characters in the story find out why; you’ll probably put two and two together
long before then.Of the three movies on
the Blu-ray disc, “Gypsy Wildcat” may be the purest example of Universal’s
genius in recycling and repurposing its contract actors, directors, and sets
from one film to the next across different genres in its movie-factory
heyday.The director, Roy William Neill,
was borrowed from the studio’s popular Sherlock Holmes series, as were Nigel
Bruce and Gale Sondergaard.Bruce plays
Tovar’s bumbling lackey in much the same spirit as he portrayed Dr. Watson to
Basil Rathbone’s Holmes.Sondergaard,
here the wife of the Gypsy king, is better remembered as “The Spider Woman” in
Neill’s 1943 Holmes mystery of the same name.Neill and producer George Waggner were also associated with Universal’s
iconic Wolf Man horror series, and the wagons driven by the Gypsies were
probably the same ones used for Maria Ouspenskaya’s Gypsy caravan in “The Wolf
Man.”Leo Carrillo, from Universal’s
B-Westerns, plays Anube, the Gypsy chief; he, Sondergaard, Coe, and the rest of
the troupe reflect producers’ venerable tradition of choosing ethnic-looking
but non-Romani actors to play Gypsies.The script was written by James M. Cain, a surprise if you know Cain
strictly as a giant of classic noir fiction with “The Postman Always Rings
Twice” and “Double Indemnity.”However,
it isn’t so startling when you remember that Cain was one of many celebrated
novelists who made good money on the side, writing or doctoring Hollywood
scripts.I met the late James M. Cain in
passing in the early 1970s, when he was guest speaker one night at a public
library in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, near where he lived in retirement at
the time.At eighty-one, he was
formidably tall, burly, bushy-haired, and bespectacled.When he amiably chatted with members of the
audience, he answered several questions I asked about his career—none of which
dealt with “Gypsy Wildcat,” I should note.
“Sudan”
(1945), Montez’s and Hall’s final film together, is set in ancient Egypt, where
the benevolent king of Khemis is murdered.The crime appears to be the work of an elusive rebel leader, Herua, who
has eluded all attempts to catch him through the usual means.The grieving Princess Naila (Montez) has a
better (or worse) idea.She will
disguise herself as a commoner, find Herua at a fair in Sudan where he
customarily buys horses for his band, and have him arrested.Here, Sudan is a colourful whirl of dancing
girls and camels, not the grim wasteland of starving children we now see on the
TV news.Naila doesn’t realise that her
grand vizier, Horadef, who schemes to seize power, was the actual
murderer.That fact is disclosed ten
minutes into the story, although most of us will already have caught on, given
that a) grand viziers in movies like this are always secretly masterminding
palace coups, and b) Horadef is played by the great George Zucco, who filled
similar roles in Universal’s horror series about the Mummy.Horadef pays slavers to kidnap Naila when she
goes undercover.Two horse thieves,
Merat and Nebka, come to her rescue.Merat is played by Hall, and Nebka by Andy Devine.Devine provides the same nasal-voiced comedy
relief that he did in countless Westerns, only wearing robes this time instead
of suspenders.When a handsome stranger
shows up (Turhan Bey), he and Naila fall in love with each other, before the
princess discovers that the stranger is Herua.Ably written by Edmund L. Hartmann and directed by John Rawlins, the
film could almost serve as a G-rated modern sequel to “Disney’s Aladdin,” except
for a scene where Naila is branded on the arm by the slavers, and another where
she and Herua retire to his tent for a night of passion.The Egyptian sets were ported over from two
earlier Middle Eastern fantasies starring Montez and Hall, “Arabian Nights” (1942)
and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” (1944).It hardly mattered that the Egypt of the Pharaohs and the Baghdad of Ali
Baba were two separate historical periods a thousand years apart, since
audiences’ apathy to such details “made little practical difference where the
story was set,” as critic Ian Cameron noted in his 1973 book, Adventure in
the Movies.1945 was a pivotal
moment in Universal Pictures’ history as the year it dropped the Montez and
Hall series, along with its B-horror films and Sherlock Holmes pictures.When the studio returned to the genre in the
early 1950s as Universal-International, it did so with a new generation of young
contract players like Rock Hudson and Yvonne de Carlo.Montez appeared in a few more pictures and
died in 1951 at 39.Hall had a long
career of Westerns, period adventures, and TV guest appearances through the
early 1960s, including baby-boomer fame as television’s “Ramar of the Jungle” in
the ‘50s.
Although
the Montez and Hall movies ran widely on TV during the same era as “Ramar of
the Jungle,” they were broadcast in grainy black-and-white, robbing them of
their lustrous big screen Technicolor.The
Kino Lorber Blu-ray restores their original sharpness and rich palette,
supplemented by engaging audio commentary from Phillipa Berry for “White Savage”
and “Sudan,” and David Del Valle for “Gypsy Wildcat.”Theatrical trailers and subtitles for the deaf
and hearing-impaired are also included.
“Maria
Montez and Jon Hall Collection” can be ordered from Amazon HERE.
Fred Blosser is the author of "Sons of Ringo: The Great Spaghetti Western Heroes". Click here to order from Amazon)
