RETRO-ACTIVE: MEMORABLE ARTICLES FROM THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVES

By Hank Reineke

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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RETRO-ACTIVE: THE BEST FROM THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVES

By Lee Pfeiffer

There has been a very positive response to Cinema Retro's coverage of "B" WWII movies in some of our back issues. Writer Howard Hughes concentrated on the films produced by Oakmont Productions, the British-based company that financed and released such modestly-budgeted gems as Attack on the Iron Coast, The Thousand Plane Raid, Hell Boats, and Mosquito Squadron. These films had no lofty pretenses of being potential Oscar winners. Instead, they were made simply to generate a modest profit. However, they tended to be intelligently scripted and well-directed and acted, with showcase roles afforded to stars who didn't usually get top-billing (Lloyd Bridges, Christopher George, David McCallum). The 1970 film Underground was not an Oakmont production but is largely indistinguishable from the company's catalog of titles. It stars Robert Goulet as Dawson, an embittered American agent for military intelligence who is based in England. Dawson is wracked by guilt because his mission behind German lines in occupied France ended disastrously. Both he and his fellow agent (his wife) were captured. Dawson, under extreme torture, revealed his wife's true identity and she suffered a horrendous death at the hands of the Gestapo. Dawson managed to escape and make his way back to England, though how he achieved this remarkable feat is glossed over in the script.  The film opens with Dawson bluffing his way aboard a plane carrying a fellow agent on a new mission over occupied France. Dawson, who is determined to atone for his previous failure by taking on this mission himself, disables the agent and parachutes in his place to meet his contacts in the French Resistance. His French underground colleagues find him to be a bitter, unpleasant man and it isn't long before they realize that he is an imposter for their real contact. Nevertheless, Dawson persuades them to let him carry out the important mission which involves kidnapping a high profile German general who has vital intelligence information and bringing him back to England. Dawon's team is headed by Boule (Lawrence Dobkin), a headstrong and valiant man who frequently locks horns with Dobson over strategy. The team also includes Yvonne (Daniele Gaubert), a beautiful agent who is Boule's wife. Complications ensue when Dawson shows his more human side and he and Yvonne secretly become lovers.

Underground is the kind of film that often receives the backhanded praise of benefiting from "workmanlike" efficiency from its stars and director Arthur H. Nadel. Yet, like the Oakmont productions, it probably plays better in today's era of overblown, CGI-stuffed action movies than it did at the time of its initial release. The film is tightly scripted and the plan to capture the German general is straight out of a top-of-the-line Mission: Impossible episode. The movie was shot on location in Ireland but the countryside passes convincingly for France. Goulet, grim and determined, makes for an impressive leading man and there are fine turns by Lawrence Dobkin and Carl Duering, who is impressive as the German general who adds a clever plot twist to the story line. Like most of these WWII mini "epics" of the period, the production team manages to make the film look far more expensive than it probably was. The action sequences are exciting and well-staged, particularly a climactic shootout as Dawson awaits the arrival of a British plane on a makeshift runway as German forces close in on him and his team.

Underground has been released by MGM as a region-free DVD with a rather bland cover design instead of the terrific original poster artwork. Transfer quality is very good but there are no bonus extras.

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By Todd Garbarini

Paramount Home Video has released a set of five horror films in 4K UHD format. Here is a breakdown of the films included in the set.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

I was in the minority of those left unimpressed by Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968), based upon the 1967 novel of the same name by Ira Levin. I never saw what the fuss was about and could not find it even remotely scary when I originally saw it in the 1980s on VHS. I rewatched the film when the Criterion Collection released it on the now-out-of-print Blu-ray in October 2012 (if you have that version, hold on to it) and I realized that I had an incorrect reading of it. I believe that the terror that oozes from the screen is directly attributed to Rosemary Woodhouse’s (Mia Farrow) new life in the enormous Dakota Apartments (made famous by Mark David Chapman following his murder of John Lennon in December 1980) which is surrounded by people who initially make her feel safe and welcomed, but slowly begin to reveal their true natures which are malevolent and evil. Her husband Guy (maverick independent film director and actor John Cassavetes) is a struggling actor who understudies for a Broadway play and is suddenly fast-tracked to the lead role by the inexplicable blindness that befalls the play’s lead actor (portrayed by an off-screen Tony Curtis over the phone) following a discussion with two nosy neighbors (Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon as Roman and Minnie Castavet, respectively) who ingratiate themselves into their lives. Coincidence? Guy is often short-tempered with his wife, but midway through the film he suddenly has a burst of fatherhood when he suggests to her that they have a baby. Overwhelmingly happy, Rosemary soon becomes suspicious of the people around her during her pregnancy. They are revealed to be a coven of witches, and Rosemary is carrying Satan’s child during a disturbing sequence of supernatural impregnation that she believes was just a dream.

Rosemary’s Baby is the ultimate gaslighting movie. It is also a movie that, I would imagine, would work to great effect on the psyche of female audience members for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is due to knowing what the outcome of Rosemary’s pregnancy is, and knowing that no one, not even the doctor (Charles Grodin) she has foolishly and naïvely confiding in regarding her suspicions regarding the coven, can or is even willing to help her. The film is set against a backdrop of complete normalcy, and when that normalcy is slowly eroded by the Devil’s minions in sheep’s clothing, it’s too much for us and Rosemary to bear. It’s also a film about betrayal, and it’s shocking to see how Guy willingly confesses to her that he had no problem selling her out to this life inorder to make an easy life for themselves, something he sees as a bonus. Her reaction to him and to the (offscreen) face of her baby is complete disbelief, and Ms. Farrow is more than capable of carrying the film. Rosemary’s horrifically contorted face when she sees her baby for the first time, Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking (sorry, Walt…), is all that the audience needs to know that the evil has come full circle.

Rosemary’s Baby turns 55 this year. Filmed in the final four months of 1967 and released on Wednesday, June 12, 1968, it takes place in 1965 and 1966. Ruth Gordon won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance. It is widely considered to be one of the greatest horror films of all time, and it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2014. The film spawned a TV-movie follow-up in 1976 with Patty Duke.

The new package contains the film in 4K UHD on one disc, and the film on a standard Blu-ray, the latter boasting the following extras:

Rosemary's Baby – A Retrospective – this piece, originally shot in 2000 for the DVD, runs just under 17 minutes and includes comments from the late film producer Robert Evans, the late production designer Richard Sylbert, and Roman Polanski.

Mia and Roman – this piece runs roughly 23 minutes and contains a lot of nice behind-the-scenes shots taken during filming on location in New York City, with input from actress Mia Farrow and director Roman Polanski.

Theatrical Trailer

50th Anniversary "Redband" Trailer

This is a nice upgrade to 4K that will make you feel as though you’re watching it in a cinema again, though the lack of a feature-length commentary by film historians is disappointing given the film’s stature in the genre, making one wonder if the director is just against this sort of thing. Steven Spielberg and David Lynch do not offer commentaries on their works, sadly.

NOTE: It has come to Paramount’s attention that there is an error on this pressing, and they are going to correct it with a disc replacement program. Apparently there is a line of dialog missing from the film! When you purchase this box set, click on this link to request the replacement discs which should become available in the next several months.

Pet Sematary (1989)

Stephen King published two frightening and best-selling novels in 1983: Christine and Pet Sematary. Attempting to sandwich these massive tales into films that ran less than two hours is a near impossible task and neither film, the former directed by John Carpenter and the latter by Mary Lambert, is completely successful in this regard. Lensed between August and November 1988 and released on Friday, April 21, 1989, Pet Sematary begins with a familiar nod to Dan Curtis’s creepy Burnt Offerings (1976) as Dr. Louis Creed and his wife Rachel (Dale Midkiff and Denise Crosby) leave the Windy City and arrive at their new Ludlow, Main home with their young daughter Ellie (Blasé Berdahl) and even younger son Gage (Miko Hughes). The house is located right in front of a major road that trucks whiz by at a high rate of speed, setting up the roadway as the imminent threat. Jud Crandall (Fred Gwynne), the family neighbor, takes them to the Pet Sematary and explains how children bury their pets there. This proves convenient when the family, sans Louis, visit Rachel’s parents for Thanksgiving, and Ellie’s cat Winston Churchill (“Church” for short) is killed by a truck. Jud takes Louis to a location beyond the Pet Sematary called the Micmac Burying Ground dating back to ancient Native American days. Buried pets have come back to life, though their personalities are different, and this is no exception with Church. The idea is to save Ellie the grief of losing him.

Following Ellie’s displeasure of the now-reanimated Church’s smell, Gage finds himself in the path of a truck and, following his death, Louis digs up his corpse and heads for the Micmac Burying Ground despite verbal warnings from Jud. Unfortunately, Gage comes back as a meanie, killing those around him until a final showdown with his father.

Despite being written by author King, the screenplay never really manages to get above the level of a gross-out horror film. The subject of grief is best left to serious dramas (think Ingmar Bergman) as director Mary Lambert can only give us what’s on the written page as a truncation of an oversized novel, is fairly schematic at best. Whereas the novel is more of a deep-rooted mediation on the nature of the overwhelming emotion of grief over the death of a child, the film focuses more on the horrific aspects of the deaths at hand. It does seem to be enough, however, to satisfy genre fans.

Bonus Content (on both 4K UHD Blu-ray and Standard Blu-ray Disc):

Feature-length commentary by director Mary Lambert

Pet Sematary: Fear and Remembrance – this piece is in high definition and runs about 7 minutes. Select members of the film’s cast and crew look back on the film and its reception.

Pet Sematary: Revisitation – this piece is in high definition and runs about 10 minutes. The director discusses the film’s production, how she came to direct the movie, and restoring the film.

Still Galleries – this is in high definition and consists of a large selection of photos separated into four sections.

Storyboards Introduction by Mary Lambert – this intro runs 1 minute in length. She explains how they derived the new transfer from the original camera negative and how the storyboards came to be.

Storyboards – this feature is extensive and recalls the image galleries of the laserdisc days. By using the left and right buttons on the remote control, you can navigate what is essentially a visual representation of the film. Very cool!

Behind the Scenes – this is a stills gallery that, like the storyboards, can be navigated in a similar fashion, showing images on the set of shooting during the summer of 1988.

Marketing – nice section of stills containing the marketing of the film for both theatrical and home video exhibition.

The following extras are only on the standard Blu-ray, though I will never understand why they do not replicate all extras on both discs as there is more than enough room to do so:

Stephen King Territory – this is a nice piece from 2006 that is shot in standard definition for the then-DVD release and runs about 13 minutes. It discusses the autobiographical genesis for the story, which really happened to Mr. King’s family and daughter.

The Characters – also from 2006 and shot in standard definition, this runs 13 minutes and looks at the motivations behind the characters and the cats used on the set. They had an ingenious method of making the cat’s eyes glow maniacally with an attachment to the Panavision cameras.

Filming the Horror – running 10 minutes, Mary Lambert discusses how the script came to her and while she read Stephen King’s novels, she did not consider herself to be a horror film director. Miko Hughes, who was two-and-a-half-years old when he played Gage, appears to have had a fun time on the set!

Smile (2022)

David Sandberg’s 2013 short film Lights Out is a brilliantly frightening, just-under-three-minute film about a woman seeing a strange creature in her kitchen and bedroom. It is widely available on Youtube and is one of the scariest movies I have seen in my 42 years of watching horror films and thrillers. It provided the basis for an unnecessary, feature-length film of the same name three years later, also directed by the same person, who has gone on to direct Annabelle: Creation (2017), as well as other projects. Likewise, Parker Finn is a director who made a short film called Laura Hasn’t Slept (2020), starring Caitlin Stasey and Lew Temple as her somnologist. It’s the second short he made after his impressive and creepy The Hidebehind (2018), a nearly ten-minute now-you-see-me, now-you-don’t bit of computer trickery that will make you think twice about trekking solo in a forest. In Laura Hasn’t Slept, which is just under twelve minutes, Laura tells her therapist that she has a recurring nightmare wherein a frightening man is constantly smiling at her. While I appreciated the effort of this film and experienced no difficulty in determining the ending, the prospect of sitting through the theatrical version entitled Smile simply did not sit well with me. My disappointment with Lights Out nearly made me pass on Smile, and I am glad that I reconsidered.

Unlike most of the horror films marketed today, Smile is every bit as terrifying as its marketing campaign has professed. Like The Blair Witch Project (1999), Smile feels like the sort of film that would emotionally bifurcate the audience into those who love it and those who hate it. In terms of genre tropes, the film’s most obvious cinematic antecedent is David Robert Mitchell’s superb It Follows (2014), and a nod to the film’s title can be further traced back to the malevolent chauffeur, played with icy stillness by the late Anthony James in Dan Curtis’s Burnt Offerings (1976). While it is true that familiarity can often breed contempt, this does not make Smile any less frightening. There is credence to the notion that although the film might offer up a less-than-compassionate view of mental illness and handle the subject flippantly, the movie should ultimately be judged for what it sets out to do: scare you. It may not be completely original, but it is no less frightening.

Sosie Bacon, the daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, gives a bravura performance as recently engaged Rose Cotter, a psychiatrist who meets a new patient, Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey, the actress from the short film), who fails to convince Rose that she is being chased by a demon that possesses people by smiling at them. Rose’s training misinterprets this as an episode of some sort of psychosis until Laura screams and reacts violently to something in the examination room invisible to Rose. Laura’s terror suddenly turns inexplicably serene wherein she effortlessly cuts her own throat with a broken plant’s pot while smiling maniacally at Rose, who reacts with complete terror. Unbeknownst to Rose, a terrible curse that plagued Laura has now been transferred to her. It takes Rose a while to make this realization. In the interim, she blames what she experiences on overworking, reluctantly taking a week off at the urging of her manager. Her fiancée (Jesse T. Usher) wants to help her but feels powerless. Rose begins to have hallucinations, and as the audience we see what she sees. Her mother’s painful death becomes a force that she needs to reckon with and is a major reason why she works as hard as she does. The hallucinations become more and more unnerving. With the aid of her ex-boyfriend cop Joel (Kyle Gallner), she begins looking into murder cases wherein people having died by suicide that they committed in front of another person, and they themselves have also witnessed a suicide. A turning point occurs when Robert Talley (Rob Morgan of Netflix’s Stranger Things, in a small but powerful role), a murderer currently in prison, managed to escape the clutches of the entity. With Joel’s help, Rose goes to the prison to see him. He tells Rose that the entity feeds on other people’s trauma. Apparently, the only way to relieve oneself of this curse is to murder someone else in front of a witness to thereby transfer the trauma on to them (again, similarly like in It Follows). Rose attempts to do this, yet it turns out to be another hallucination. By the end of the film, Rose confronts her childhood trauma at her now-abandoned childhood home in an unsatisfactory ending that paves the way for a sequel.

Thematically similar to Rosemary’s Baby in that the protagonist knows the truth and cannot seem to convince anyone around them that they are not crazy, Smile, while certainly not original, manages to take a familiar horror genre trope and seriously make it its own, packing a powerful emotional punch with several genuine jump scares nearly on a par with Gary Sherman’s Death Line (1972) and William Peter Blatty’s Exorcist III: Legion (1990). In order for a film like this to work, the performances need to be believable and they are all spot-on.

Bonus Content (on 4K Ultra HD Disc):

Audio Commentary by director Parker Finn – this is a feature-length discussion by the film’s director who speaks about the movie scene by scene regarding what he wanted in the scenes and what he got. I normally shy away from such commentaries as I am not interested in a blow-by-blow description of the film, but the director speaks so intelligently about it that he is a constant pleasure to listen to.

Something's Wrong with Rose: Making Smile (HD) – at just under 30 minutes, this is a behind-the-scenes look at what it took to make the film in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Flies on the Wall: Inside the Score (HD) – Smile has one of the creepiest scores that I have ever heard, and it was composed by Cristobal Tapia de Veer. In under nine minutes, we are treated to his vast studio and his methods of creating ungodly sounds for the film.

Deleted Scenes with Optional Commentary by director Parker Finn – there are two scenes provided here with an optional commentary and add depth to Rose’s character. These run just under 12 minutes. I would have loved to have had these scenes added as an optional cut of the film viewable through seamless branching.

Laura Hasn't Slept – Original Short with Introduction by director Parker Finn – this is the short film that Paramount scouts saw at South By Southwest in Austin, TX that paved the way for Smile. It runs about 11 minutes.

Cinema Retro has received the following press release: 

THE BELOVED HOLIDAY FAVORITE COMES HOME

FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER ON 4K ULTRA HD

"LOVE ACTUALLY 20^TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION"

YOURS TO OWN NOVEMBER 21, 2023

FROM UNIVERSAL PICTURES HOME ENTERTAINMENT

INCLUDES BLU-RAY™ AND DIGITAL CODE

SYNOPSIS: Funny, irresistible, and heartwarming, Love Actually is the ultimate romantic comedy that follows eight couples whose lives intersect shortly before Christmas. From the makers of Bridget Jones's Diary and Notting Hill, this beloved film is headlined by an incredible roster of stars including Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Laura Linney, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Keira Knightley, Rowan Atkinson and more. Take a breathtaking tour of love's delightful twists and turns as you fall under the spell of Love Actually and share the laughs and charm again and again!

• BONUS FEATURES:
• · Making LOVE ACTUALLY (NEW)
• o Join Writer/Director Richard Curtis along the with cast and crew as they reflect on the making of the film and its legacy 20 years later.
• · Deleted Scenes with Introductions by Richard Curtis
• · The Music of LOVE ACTUALLY with Introductions by Richard Curtis
• · The Storytellers
• o A featurette exploring the film’s main storylines, featuring interviews with the cast discussing their characters and the major elements within each on-screen relationship.
• · Kelly Clarkson “The Trouble with Love is” Music Video
• · Billy Mack “Christmas is All Around” Music Video
• · Feature Commentary with Director Richard Curtis and Actors Hugh Grant, Bill Nighy and Thomas Sangsters

Instagram: @uniallaccess

X: @UniAllAccess

Tiktok: @universalallaccess

LOVE ACTUALLY FILMMAKERS:

Cast: Alan Rickman, Bill Nighy, Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Laura Linney, Liam Neeson, Martine McCutcheon, Rowan Atkinson

Casting By: Mary Selway _CDG

Music By: Craig Armstrong

Co-Producers: Debra Hayward, Liza Chasin

Costume Designer: Joanna Johnston

Line Producers: Chris Thompson

Production Designer: Jim Clay

Director of Photography: Michael Coulter _BSC

Editor: Nick Moore

Produced By: Duncan Kenworthy, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner

Written and Directed By: Richard Curtis 

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By Fred Blosser

“The Hands of Orlac,” a 1960 U.K.-French co-production, was the third movie version of “Les Mains d’Orlac,” a sensational 1920 novel by French writer Maurice Renard. Like many of the other horror pictures released in 1960, it was filmed in black-and-white. The director, Edmond T. Gréville, was a veteran French-born filmmaker who had worked in both France and England. His previous picture, “Beat Girl” (1960), had featured Christopher Lee as a strip club impresario in an exploitative story about beatniks, aspiring rockers, and strippers. Lee and other British actors filled most of the major supporting roles in “The Hands of Orlac.” Exterior scenes were filmed on the French Riviera, interiors at Britain’s Shepperton Studios. An American actor, Mel Ferrer, was cast in the lead. Ferrer was a reliably familiar leading man for the all-important U.S. market. His name lent box-office appeal in those days when foreign movies were suspect in small-town America, as it did for another offbeat horror production in which he also starred that same year, Roger Vadim’s “Blood and Roses,” a French and Italian co-production. But U.S. distributors apparently saw no pressing need to slip Gréville’s film into American theaters, since it didn’t open here until 1964. By that time, a promotional still from the movie had appeared in the October 1963 issue of “Famous Monsters of Filmland” magazine, in a preview of upcoming horror and fantasy releases.

In the story, a celebrated concert pianist and composer, Stephen Orlac (Ferrer), flies from London to France to visit his fiancee, Louise (Lucile Saint Simon). His small plane wrecks in a fog, and Orlac’s hands are “burnt to the bone” in the crash. After his ambulance passes through a police checkpoint where a condemned murderer, Vasseur, is being transported to the guillotine, Louise prevails on a famous surgeon, Dr. Volchett (Donald Wolfit), to operate in an effort to save her lover’s badly injured hands. Coming out of the anaesthetic, Orlac finds his hands encased in huge, unsightly plaster casts. Worse, he sees the front page of a newspaper that juxtaposes a report about Vasseur’s execution with one about his own injuries. To his groggy eyes, the stories gradually merge into one under the headline, “Stephen Orlac Receives the Hands of Vasseur, the Murderer.” Lifting the grotesque casts, Orlac flies into hysterics. This was the publicity still that intrigued us young readers of “Famous Monsters” in 1963. It was also the centerpiece of the movie’s lobby-poster art.

Did the newspaper actually display the stories that Orlac read, more or less as he interpreted them? Was he hallucinating? Was there even a newspaper at all? No matter, the high-strung pianist becomes convinced that the surgeon found his hands irreparably damaged, amputated them, and replaced them with Vasseur’s, especially since, as he mourns, “They feel as if they no longer belong to me!” After the casts come off, he can’t get his fingers to strike the right notes on the keyboard.

The obsession grows stronger when Orlac and Louise make love. His fingers unconsciously tighten around her throat, and she begins to choke. That incident and others convince the pianist that Vasseur’s hands have a violent will of their own, and his fiancee’s life is in danger as long as they’re together. He checks into a sketchy Marseilles hotel under an assumed name, where he encounters a small-time stage magician named Nero (Christopher Lee, returning from “Beat Girl” as an even sleazier character). Nero senses an opportunity for blackmail; obviously, “Mr. Stephen” is a well-off guy who wouldn’t be holed up in a dump unless he had something to hide. Nero pimps out his pouty assistant and mistress, Li-Lang (Dany Carrel), to cozy up to Orlac and get him to talk.

Orlac’s self-imposed exile doesn’t last long. After Louise tracks him down, he decides to straighten up, return to England, marry Louise, and resume his career. But he continues to brood over his persuasion that his hands are no longer his own. Discovering “Mr. Stephen’s” true identity, Nero and Li-Lang follow. Nero sets about to feed Orlac’s paranoia, reasoning that the unhinged pianist will kill someone sooner or later, opening himself to big-time extortion.

To the extent that film enthusiasts take notice of “The Hands of Orlac” at all, they mostly judge it seriously inferior to the previous movie versions of Renard’s novel. Robert Wiene’s “Orlacs Hände” (1924), also called “The Hands of Orlac” in English-language prints, was a classic of German silent cinema, with Conrad Veidt as the title character amid feverish Expressionist sets. Following in 1935 from MGM, Karl Freund’s “Mad Love” with Colin Clive as Orlac draped the story in sadism and sexual perversion, to the extent Freund could do so under the vigilant eyes of the Hays Code censors.

Gréville’s remake dialed back on Wiene’s and Freund’s extravagance, accounting for some of its lacklustre press from critics who like to see the gothic thriller envelope pushed further than Gréville pushed it, at least in their opinion. It’s very much a product of 1960, emphasising the psychological aspect of Orlac’s dilemma and stepping into film noir territory once the intimidating Nero and Li-Lang enter the plot. It even evokes the emerging New Wave of French cinema with its documentarian exterior shots on the Riviera. Claude Bolling’s musical score includes light jazz for a scene in which Orlac tools around in a vintage sports car, and rinky-tink cabaret music for Li-Lang’s sultry song-and-slink routine following Nero’s magic act, juxtaposed with Beethoven and Liszt in the concert scenes that open and close the movie. Mel Ferrer lacks Conrad Veidt’s eye-popping hysteria and Colin Clive’s furrowed anxiety, his Orlac repurposed for 1960 as a sophisticate in shades, pullover sweater, and tailored slacks for casual wear, and an expensive suit for business occasions. If you’re a retro-fan of JFK-era men’s fashions, you probably won’t mind. You may even prefer Ferrer’s interpretation over his predecessors’. Like other British horror films of the time, such as “Jack the Ripper” (1959) and “The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll” (1960), “The Hands of Orlac” promises plenty of sex appeal courtesy of Lucile Saint Simon’s filmy negligees and Dany Carrel’s showgirl outfits. In truth, this stuff is pretty tame by 2023 standards, but it was a draw for male filmgoers at a time when even the centrefolds in “Playboy” were often modestly posed.

For most of the picture, we don’t know whether Orlac’s obsession has a basis in reality, since we don’t actually see the operation itself. Were the killer’s hands really grafted onto his wrists, or is the pianist suffering from a morbid neurosis? An explanation is made toward the end that for may find satisfying or frustrating, depending on your tastes. It doesn’t help that Orlac is surrounded by oddball characters who only compound his unease. Nero is the only one who is overtly menacing, but others are unsettling in their own ways. In his few minutes on screen, Donald Wolfit’s Dr. Volchett is brusque and possibly alcoholic; his decision to save (or replace) Stephen’s damaged hands seems more a whim than a humanitarian impulse. His unnamed assistant (Anita Sharp Bolster) is a starchy spinster who wears rimless glasses with impenetrably thick lenses, like Albert Dekker’s in 1940’s “Dr. Cyclops.” When Orlac tries to call Dr. Volchett to either confirm or relieve his suspicions, the assistant tells him the surgeon is on professional travel—to Moscow!—and unreachable in that era before cellphones and Zoom. She brightens up as she enjoys a chance to extol her boss, but her comments only deepen Orlac’s fears: “Dr. Volchett is a magician,” she declares. “Your case was his greatest triumph.” In a small but bravura appearance, Donald Pleasence plays Coates, a sculptor who wants to use Orlac’s hands as the model for those of Lazarus in a biblical tableau of Lazarus raised from the dead. “All we see of Lazarus is his hands—your hands, Orlac!”, he exclaims, seizing the pianist’s wrists. Given Stephen’s state of mind, the sculptor’s fervor is more invasive than flattering, like the irritating stranger who latches on to you at a party and won’t let go. As he makes his pitch with growing enthusiasm, Orlac stares at his hands (poised exactly as he had scrutinized his grotesque casts earlier in the story), and runs off in panic.

“The Hands of Orlac” isn’t the best horror thriller of 1960. That would be Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” with “Blood and Roses” and Georges Franju’s “Eyes Without a Face” as close seconds. But it’s better than its obscurity would imply. In the U.S., “Eyes Without a Face” was dumped onto double bills as “The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus” and generally ignored by critics, much as “The Hands of Orlac” was. Now, it’s widely regarded as a classic. It’s surprising that Gréville’s picture hasn’t received similar reappraisal, given the renewed interest in neglected horror films in the home video era, and the movie’s value as an early showcase for Christopher Lee and Donald Pleasence. The problem may lie with the fact that an official DVD or Blu-ray edition for fair evaluation doesn’t exist in the U.S., the U.K., or anywhere else as far as I can tell. DVD-R versions are sold on the collector’s market, with caveats about their visual quality.

We discovered this presentation of the film on YouTube, apparently sourced from tape, perhaps one of two competing VHS releases in the 1990s, or a videotape from a long-ago television broadcast. The image is better than you might expect, if inferior to the hi-def transfers we’ve come to expect nowadays. It’s also the easiest way to find the movie, at least until we can hope to see original elements unearthed, if they still exist, and a better print prepared for Blu-ray or one of the major streaming platforms.

(To watch in full screen format, click on "Watch on YouTube".)

By Lee Pfeiffer

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

By Lee Pfeiffer

Although the practice is all but obsolete today, for decades radio spots were used to promote new films to American audiences. For many of us, this was an era where you felt like your social status had improved immeasurably if your latest used car had the ability to pick up FM radio stations, even if the vehicle could be relied upon to break down several times a week. Radio spots generally ran in a variety of lengths ranging from 60 seconds to 10 seconds. Because they lacked visual elements, the producers of the tracks often used sensationalistic tactics to gain the attention of listeners, often stressing the most comedic or shocking elements of the film depending upon its subject matter. As with all things nostalgic, there is a passionate interest in radio spots among some retro movie fans who collect the vinyl discs. Most were released on 45 RPM but in earlier versions from the 1950s,  they were usually on 33 1/3" records.

Here is an original 1973 radio spot for William Friedkin's "The Exorcist".

Cinema Retro has received the following press release:

"Fans can plumb the depths of the horror genre with this collectible box set featuring five unforgettable movies, all in eye-popping 4K Ultra HD, along with over four hours of legacy special features and exclusive collectible items. Housed in deluxe packaging, each of the following films is presented in a special sleeve with artwork exclusive to the collection— Rosemary's Baby (1968) · Pet Sematary (1989) · Smile (2022) · Crawl (2019) · and a special mystery title making its 4K Ultra HD debut. The PARAMOUNT SCARES VOL. 1 Limited-Edition 4K Blu-ray Box Set also boasts collectible items, including an exclusive, full-size Fangoria magazine produced especially for the release. This special edition of the celebrated publication—"first in fright" since 1979—features a curated selection of new and classic articles from the magazine's archives. The set also includes a Paramount Scares enamel pin, unique stickers, and access to a Digital copy of each film. • Rosemary’s Baby (1968) • Pet Sematary (1989) • Crawl (2019) • Smile (2022) • “Mystery” Exclusive 5th Feature."

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Sam Peckinpah made some great movies but even the best of them were often associated with unpleasant aspects during production and in the release of the films. Peckinpah's maverick personality, hard drinking and drug use resulted in big problems with studio brass. Sometimes his films would be severely edited against his wishes. By 1974, Peckinpah's personal problems were worsening, as were his relationships with the studios.  Yet, he found great satisfaction with his bizarre crime film "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia". The movie received mixed reviews at the time and wasn't a major hit, but Peckinpah enjoyed the rare artistic freedom he was given by the studio to make the film his way. The movie has since become a cult favorite among retro movie fans- and even if it doesn't appeal to you, it's never boring and you can relish Peckinpah pal Warren Oates in a rare starring role. (Lee Pfeiffer)

Remember the gloriously cheesy 1967 James Bond spoof Operation Kid Brother? It starred Sean Connery's younger brother Neil in an attempt to capitalize on the 007 craze. The bizarre film did boast some first-rate talent including an assortment of alumni from the "real" Bond movies including Daniela Bianchi, Adolfo Celi, Anthony Dawson, Lois Maxwell and Bernard Lee (the latter two blatantly recreating their "M"/Monepenny relationship). The film is fun and represents a guilty pleasure. It also includes a catchy theme song by Ennio Morricone, yes, that Ennio Morricone! Making the situation even stranger is that Neil Connery (who is badly dubbed in the movie) is referred to as "Connery"! (For an 8-page report on the making of the film, including an interview with Neil Connery, see Cinema Retro issue #12). The trailer presented here is appropriately of grind house quality. The film was released in different countries under different titles including "O.K. Connery!", the name of the opening song. The film has never received a quality home video release, having been relegated to bargain basement labels. However, the good news is that it is streaming on Amazon Prime. The print used is probably the best presentation of the movie you will find.

CINEMA RETRO #57 (2023)

Highlights of issue #57 include:

Mike Siegel goes behind the scenes of Sam Peckinpah's  Cross of Iron  in part one of a two-part article

Lee Pfeiffer and Dave Worrall revisit producer Samuel Bronston's Cinerama epic Circus World and explore why it failed.

Simon Lewis examines director Ken Hughes's 1970 production of Cromwell starring Richard Harris

Brian Davidson provides an appreciation of the obscure cult film Unman, Wittering and Zigo.

Gareth Owen looks back at the Clint Eastwood movies filmed at Pinewood Studios.

Lee Pfeiffer reviews Roger Corman's X: The Man with the X Ray Eyes

Mark Cerulli shows how the filming of the James Bond film You Only Live Twice was covered in the U.S. military press in Japan.

Dave Worrall pays tribute to those great old British film magazines.

(VERY FEW ISSUES LEFT!)

WORLDWIDE : CINEMA RETRO ISSUE #57

WORLDWIDE : CINEMA RETRO ISSUE #57 $30.00 USD

By Darren Allison

Film Masters is a new classic film restoration and distribution company formed by industry veteran and film historian Phil Hopkins. The company launched on September 26th with an impressive, region-free Blu-ray release. For decades, dating back to the humble early beginnings of the home video cassette, these two public domain favourites seemed to once flood the market. Often struck and scanned from poor quality 16mm prints, the process and distribution hardly helped the reputation of these two low-budget slices of fifties science fiction. Of course, there’s no getting away from the fact that The Giant Gila Monster (1959) and The Killer Shrews (1959) were ever going to be regarded as stunning examples of quality science fiction, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they can’t be considered as hugely entertaining and enjoyable vehicles.

Both films (directed by Ray Kellogg) were originally released as a drive-in, double-bill feature in 1959. Bringing both films together here, each with their own dedicated disc, not only makes perfect sense, but offers a nice form of symmetry – giving the overall package additional logic and weight. It’s a decision that also offers a degree of ‘worth’ for fans and collectors. Fans are an appreciative group of people, so this collective form of package will only help Film Masters in gaining a healthy reputation and a certain degree of loyalty.

Beginning with what appears to be the leading feature, The Giant Gila Monster opens with a young couple, Pat (Grady Vaughn) and Liz (Yolanda Salas), parked in a bleak, rural locale overlooking a ravine. A giant Gila monster attacks the car, sending it into the ravine and killing the couple. Later, several friends of the couple assist the local sheriff (Fred Graham) in his search for the missing teens. Chase Winstead (Don Sullivan), a young mechanic and hot rod racer, locates the crashed car in the ravine and finds evidence of the giant lizard. However, it is only when the hungry reptile attacks a train that the authorities realise they are dealing with a giant venomous lizard. By this time, emboldened by its attacks and hungry for prey, the creature attacks the town. It heads for the local dance hall, where the town's teenagers are gathered for a hop.

Filmed near Dallas, Texas, the film was budgeted at $175,000 and was produced by Dallas drive-in theatre chain owner Gordon McLendon who wanted co-features for his main attractions. McLendon shot the film back-to-back with The Killer Shrews. In exchange for providing the special effects, Ray Kellogg was allowed to direct the film, while Curtis allowed his lead Don Sullivan to pick and perform three songs. The reasoning not only helped in padding out the action but also served in targeting the healthy teenage market. Don Sullivan, a veteran of several low-budget monster movies, proves to be confident in both his role and surroundings, while Lisa Simone (a former French contestant for the 1957 Miss Universe contest) is arguably a little more wooden and uncomfortable.

For the best part, Ray Kellogg’s special effects work adequately well. With such a low budget, there was little consideration for an established name such as Ray Harryhausen and his stop-motion animation. So instead, a live Mexican beaded lizard was shot against scaled-down model landscapes and sets. This technique wasn’t anything new, iguanas and chameleons were also being used the very same year over at 20^th Century Fox for their adaptation of Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959). The Giant Gila Monster (naturally) was not afforded the same budget, it was simply a locally made film that was marketed and sold in a very clever way, making sure it received both nationwide and foreign distribution. But above all, it remains hugely enjoyable and serves as a reminder of far less serious times in terms of filmmaking on a shoestring.

As for the video’s quality, this new 4K scan from original 35mm material, looks incredibly good. Sharpness, contrast and sound are all highly impressive. Film Masters have provided a new level of respect for this minor league classic, and the results have really raised its once questionable profile. There is also an option of watching the film in either a TV ratio (standard 1.33:1) or a theatrical version (1.85:1). I opted for the theatrical version for reviewing which works perfectly well.

Film Masters have also provided some very nice bonus features. Heading these is a full-length audio commentary by Larry Strothe, James Gonis, Shawn Sheridan, and Matt Weinhold from The Monster Party Podcast. As the name suggests, this is a light-hearted overview but nevertheless thoroughly enjoyable. The group offer a cheekily mocking level of critique but never in with a cruel intension. The common denominator is obviously a shared love for the film. The group manage to unearth some excellent production detail and history, often quoting from original source material such as pressbooks and publicity from its time of release.

There is also a restored and remastered original theatrical trailer and a very enjoyable archival audio interview with star Don Sullivan (1929- 2018). Asking the questions is author Bryan Senn, who digs deep in extracting as much detail as possible. Sullivan appears happy to answer anything he can recall, and the interview is relaxed and unhurried. Despite the audio quality which occasionally wavers (the source sounds to be via a telephone) it remains interesting throughout and offers a unique, first-hand insight.

Next up is The Killer Shrews (1959), again directed by Ray Kellogg and utilising most of the same production crew. The story follows a group of researchers who are trapped in their remote island compound overnight by a hurricane and find themselves under siege by their abnormally large and venomous mutant test subjects, the shrews. Captain Thorne Sherman and first mate Rook Griswold deliver supplies by ship to a research compound on the remote island. The station inhabitants (scientist Marlowe Craigis, his research assistant Radford Baines, Marlowe's daughter Ann, her fiancé Jerry Farrel, and a servant Mario) give them a cold welcome and direct them to unload the ship and leave immediately. Marlowe explains he has been trying to isolate the genes responsible for growth and metabolism in order to shrink humans to half their size so as to reduce the impact of human overpopulation. He uses shrews as test animals due to their short lifespan, allowing him to track results over multiple generations. However, Marlowe's experiments have created a batch of mutant wolf-sized shrews which have escaped. The group barricade themselves inside their compound every evening before the sun sets due to the creatures' nocturnal feeding habits. They have not contacted the coast guard so that they can complete their research, predicting that the shrews will cannibalize each other once they have consumed all other food on the island.

And so begins this really enjoyable little romp. Catching up with this film once again reminded me of just how good this film really is. In fact, I’ll come right out and say it – I still think this is the superior film when compared to The Giant Gila Monster. The whole concept of a group of people trapped in a secluded and isolated locale is one that still proves effective. The film is often compared to that of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead made some 9 years later in 1968. If you take that concept, replacing the zombies with wild, oversized, very hungry shrews, then you get the general idea. Yes, one could argue that (on paper) the whole idea sounds rather ludicrous. But the film has some really creative and effective moments, especially for 1959. Considering that the ($123,000) budget for The Killer Shrews was even tighter than that of The Giant Gila Monster, the results are even more impressive.

Ray Kellogg makes exceptional good use of his special effects background. OK, so the shrews were in actual fact large coonhound dogs dressed up with long carpeted hair and Saber fangs. And close-up shots were nothing more than mere hand puppets! But somehow, the effects still work. Good use of sound effects also provides an eerie warning of the shrews’ imminent arrival. Clever quick editing also adds to the film’s overall sense of tension and drama. In fact, there are also some cleverly constructed jump shock moments and some particularly gruesome scenes – not to mention a ludicrously ingenious escape plan! So, The Killer Shrews has a great deal of positives in its favour and is well worth a re-evaluation – especially in this sparkling new transfer.

As with The Giant Gila Monster, Film Masters have afforded The Killer Shrews with another equally high-quality transfer. I thought it looked quite faultless actually, a nice clean, crisp transfer with lovely deep black tones and contrast. The audio again is also clear and sharp throughout its duration. Again, there is an option to view in either 1.33:1 or in 1.85:1 aspect ratio.

The bonus features are very enjoyable, consisting of another full-length audio commentary this time provided by author Jason A. Ney. This commentary offers a more scholarly, academic approach which is both informative and enjoyable in equal measure. Ray Kellogg – An Unsung Master is a fascinating Ballyhoo motion pictures documentary exploring the life and career of the director. And to round off the disc is a large collection of original radio spots for each movie courtesy of Gary L. Prange. Inside there is also a full colour, 22-page booklet with essays by Don Stradley and Jason A. Ney.

Overall, Film Masters have delivered a very impressive debut package. With the hope of producing similarly styled releases on a monthly basis, there’s certainly a great deal more to look forward to and their efforts should be applauded.

(Darren Allison is the Soundtracks Editor for Cinema Retro.)

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“ONE OF US”

By Raymond Benson

Step up, step up, don’t be shy! Come one, come all, to the fabulous and terrifying sideshow!

Just in time for Halloween, Cinema Retro enthusiastically welcomes The Criterion Collection’s new 2-disk Blu-ray box set release, Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers, which is a triple feature extravaganza containing a highly anticipated high definition presentation of the classic and controversial 1932 pre-code horror film, Freaks, and two earlier rare silent films, The Unknown (1927) and The Mystic (1925). All three have in common the circus/carnival/sideshow milieu in their stories, and all have similar themes focusing on the concept of “the other.” Interestingly, all three are more relevant today than ever.

When approaching this marvelous set of pictures, one must understand a little about the director, Tod Browning. Thankfully, we have as a supplement the immensely listenable and entertaining interview with acclaimed author and TV showrunner, the erudite Megan Abbott, who gives us in thirty minutes a comprehensive character study of Browning and comments about the three films. As Abbott explains, Browning was someone who actually did “run away to join the circus” as a young man, and he spent a great part of his life in that world. It is no surprise, then, that many of his films deal with that universe and the beings who inhabit it. Abbott’s presentation here is practically worth the price of admission… except that we have a three-ring circus of significant and wondrous motion pictures also in the box.

Freaks, of course, is the main attraction, as it has never been released on Blu-ray in America or the UK prior to now (Warner Brothers released a DVD years ago). Considered one of the most unusual movies ever produced in Hollywood, as well as one that has been banned in many territories, pulled from release, re-issued, chopped up, and once held as an example of Tinsel Town’s depravity and exploitative nature, Freaks is actually a masterpiece of cinema. (Is there anyone who has seen Freaks who hasn’t ever recited the famous line, “Gooba gobba, gooble gobble, one of us, one of us!”?)

The story concerns Hans (Harry Earles), a little person who works in the sideshow of a traveling circus. He is engaged to be married to another little person, Frieda (Daisy Earles, in real life Harry’s sister), and he happens to have an inheritance of some value. Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova) is, as Hans calls her, a “big person.” She is a beautiful trapeze artist, and Hans has an unrealistic crush on her, much to Frieda’s displeasure. Cleopatra’s beau, though, is Hercules (Henry Victor), the strongman. Cleopatra and Hercules conspire to bilk Hans out of his fortune, first by Cleopatra seducing Hans and getting him to propose to her. After the marriage, they will poison him, and she will inherit the money; then Cleo and Hercules can run away together and leave behind the circus life. Friends of the sideshow people, clown Phroso and seal trainer Venus (Wallace Ford and Leila Hyams), are a romantic couple (also “big people”), try to look out for Hans’ interests, but fail. The other sideshow personnel decide to get revenge for Hans, and the results are not pretty.

Browning, who knew and worked with real sideshow performers, cast them in the movie. Besides the several little people, there are a few individuals with microcephaly (then known by the derogatory term “pinheads”), a “human skeleton,” conjoined twins, a bearded lady, men and women without limbs, an “intersex” person, and others. Back in the old days of circus sideshows, audiences paid money to view these “freaks of nature” to be horrified and thrilled. Sadly, practically the only way these individuals could make a living was by displaying themselves in such a fashion.

When Freaks was first released, the reaction from audiences was exactly what it would have been at a circus sideshow—one of horror and revulsion. As a result, MGM, the studio that released the picture, realized that they had a bomb on their hands and pulled it from release. In the late 1940s, exploitation film distributor Dwayne Esper bought the rights and re-exhibited it as an exploitation film, which didn’t help the movie’s reputation. Freaks was terribly misunderstood for decades and remained so until the 1960s, when the era of youth rebellion and the collapse of the Production Code allowed for more freedom of expression in art and from audiences. Once the long-haired young people began referring to themselves as “freaks” and having “freak outs,” suddenly a film entitled Freaks had new meaning. The movie was reissued to play on college campuses and as a midnight movie in art houses—and it found new life and support.

Browning’s picture was never really meant to cause disgust in the audience. His intent was for the audience to empathize and root for the “freaks.” This is a film in which the actors with disabilities and “otherness” are the heroes, battling for the dignity and respect they deserve from the conniving and evil “normal” people who are criminals. Browning simply used the thriller genre as a means to tell the story. But in 1932, audiences could not get past the sideshow aspect of what they were looking at. They didn’t get it.

Thankfully, now we do. Yes, Freaks is hailed as one of the great horror films, but it is also a respectful look at congenital disabilities and a compassionate, endearing examination of the human condition (which leads to the question—is it really a horror film?).

Criterion’s new 2K digital restoration (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack) looks gorgeous (except for the final one-minute epilogue, which, due to poor quality source material, could not be improved). There is a new commentary by Browning expert and film scholar David J. Skal (different from the one on the former Warners DVD). Supplements pertaining to Freaks are all of those that appeared on the Warners disk (an hour long documentary on the making of the film, a look at the alternate endings, and the excised exploitation-release prologue), plus a new video gallery of many stills and portraits from the film, and the 2019 audio podcast of Kristen Lopez’s Ticklish Business.

The Unknown was a 1927 silent picture by Browning starring the great Lon Chaney in one of his most acclaimed performances as a sideshow performer with no arms. His pretzel-like feats in the film to achieve this illusion are masterful, but we learn from the commentary and Megan Abbott’s interview that Chaney had help from a real life sideshow stunt double. Nevertheless, Chaney is marvelous in this tale about Alonzo, a criminal who is hiding from the law by strapping his arms underneath a costume and pretending to be armless. He falls in love with ring assistant Nanon (a young Joan Crawford). Strongman Malabar also loves Nanon, but she rejects him because she has a phobia about hands touching her—therefore she is partial to have a platonic relationship with Alonzo. However, when Nanon finally decides to break free of her fear and marry Malabar, Alonzo does something drastic—with tragic results.

For a 1927 silent film with a new piano score by Philip Carli, The Unknown is quite engaging, especially due to the terrific performances by the entire cast. Why it’s called The Unknown is a head-scratcher, but the roughly hour-long picture is riveting. It comes with a new introduction and commentary by David J. Skal.

The Mystic, from 1925, is apparently one of the rarest of Browning’s films. Running at 72 minutes, it’s the story of a sideshow fortune teller “mystic,” Zara (Aileen Pringle), her father, the impresario Zazarack (Mitchell Lewis), and assistant Anton (Robert Ober). Con man-criminal Michael Nash (Conway Tearle) recruits the trio to come to America to swindle wealthy patrons. As noted by Abbott, the plot is very similar to that of the 1947 film noir, Nightmare Alley… but the visuals, storytelling, and acting are all surprisingly compelling for this silent picture. The score, by Dean Hurley, vastly helps with the movie’s allure. David J. Skal also provides an introduction to the film.

Criterion’s packaging is superb, and the enclosed booklet comes with an essay by film critic Farran Smith Nehme.

Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers is highly recommended for fans of the director, Freaks, silent movies, Lon Chaney, and the unique sensibilities of pre-code Hollywood. Gooba gobba!

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"Retro-Active: From the Cinema Retro Archives"

By Fred Blosser

Frederick Knott's suspense play "Wait Until Dark" premiered on Broadway on Feb. 2, 1966.  Lee Remick played Susy Hendrix, a young blind woman who becomes the target of a manipulative scheme orchestrated by a sinisterly glib psychopath, Harry Roat Jr. from Scarsdale. Robert Duvall, in his Broadway debut, had the pivotal supporting role of Roat. A movie version opened on Oct. 26, 1967, starring Audrey Hepburn (in an Oscar-nominated performance) as Susy and Alan Arkin as Roat, produced by Mel Ferrer (Hepburn's husband at the time), directed by Terence Young, and scored by Henry Mancini. A predecessor of today's popular, trickily plotted suspense movies like "Gone Gir" (2014) and "The Girl on the Train" (2016), the film was a commercial and critical success, ranking number sixteen in box-office returns for the year. Movies adapted from plays often feel stage-bound, but "Wait Until Dark" avoids those constraints, thanks in no small part to Young's fine pacing, sharp eye for detail, and sure grasp of character.

Bosley Crowther's October 27, 1967, film review in the New York Times noted that the Radio City Music Hall screening of "Wait Until Dark" included a stage show with a ballet troupe, performing dogs, and the Rockettes. Fifty years later, going out to a movie, you're lucky to get a good seat and decently lit projection for the price of admission. Any live entertainment comes courtesy of the patrons behind you who can't put away their smartphones for two hours.

Knott's play was confined to one interior set, Susy's cramped Greenwich Village apartment, which makes it a perennial favorite for little-theater and high-school drama productions on limited budgets. The movie adds a new opening scene in which Sus's husband Sam (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.), a freelance photographer, meets an attractive young woman, Lisa, as they board a flight from Montreal. When they land at JFK, Lisa hands Sam a child's doll and asks him to hold on to it for her temporarily. She says it's a present for the child of a friend, she just learned that the friend and the little girl will be meeting her at the airport, and she doesn't want to spoil the surprise; she'll call and come by for it later. Unknown to the obliging Sam, it's a phony story: Lisa is a drug mule, and narcotics are hidden inside the doll.

Lisa had planned to double-cross her accomplice Roat and split the money from the drug shipment with Mike (Richard Crenna) and Carlino (Jack Weston), her partners in past criminal schemes. Roat murders Lisa and enlists Mike and Carlino to help him find the doll in Susy and Sam's apartment. He lures Sam away with a call promising a big photo assignment. In his absence, Mike poses as an old Army friend of Sam's, and Carlino impersonates a detective investigating Lisa's murder. In a bad guy/good guy ploy, the phony Detective Sgt. Carlino insinuates that he suspects Sam of Lisa's murder. Mike intervenes, offering his support to Susy to gain her trust. To further disorient Susy, Roat poses as two men who appear to lend credence to the con.Harry Roat Sr., an an aggressive old man, barges into the apartment, noisily claiming to be in search of evidence that Lisa, his daughter-in-law, carried on a clandestine affair with Sam. Later, mild-mannered Harry Roat Jr. knocks on the door and apologizes for his father's outburst. It's a nice gimmick for Alan Arkin, who gets to impersonate three characters with different costumes and personalities. For audiences who watched the Broadway production, it might also have provided an effective "Aha" moment when they realized that there was only one Roat, not three. But it's no surprise for the movie audience, since close-up camera angles make it clear immediately that the other two are also Arkin in heavy make-up.

The new Blu-ray release of "Wait Until Dark" from the Warner Archive Collection presents the movie in a 1080p print for high-def TV. It's a definite improvement in richness from previous TV and home-video prints. The tailor-made audience is likely to be those older viewers who saw the film on the big screen in 1967, who may wonder if the movie's "gotcha"climax still holds up. Suffice to say without spoiling the scene for new viewers by going into details, it does. The film's stage origins are obvious in the dialogue-driven plot set-up and in the constrained setting of one cramped apartment. The measured exposition may be a hurdle for younger viewers used to a faster pace and visual shorthand, but the concentration of character interplay in a closed space isn't necessarily a problem, even for Millennials who have been conditioned to expect ADHD editing and splashy FX in movies. It imposes a sense of claustrophobia that subtly forces the audience to share Susy's mounting fear of being hemmed in and trapped.

In "Take a Look in the Dark", an eight-minute special feature ported over to the Blu-ray from a 2003 Warner Home Video DVD release, Alan Arkin notes that the psychotic Roat, with his granny-frame sunglasses and urban-hipster patter, was a break from the usual sneering, buttoned-down movie and TV villains of the time. "By and large, the public had not been exposed to that kind of person", he recalls. "But they began to have people like that live next to them, or see them in the newspapers or on TV." Ironically, if Roat was unsettling to 1967 audiences, he and his flick knife may seem insufficiently scary for younger viewers today, in the endless wake of movies and TV shows about flamboyantly demented murderers since "The Silence of the Lambs" (1990) -- not to mention the perpetrators of real-life mass murders that, numbingly, we seem to see every night on CNN, network, and local news.

In the special feature, Arkin and Ferrer also express fond appreciation of Hepburn, who wanted to star in "Wait Until Dark" when she realized that she was getting too old to continue playing demure ingenues, Ferrer says. Once Susy starts to figure out the con in the last half-hour of the movie and, isolated from help, summons the inner resources to fight back, she begins to resemble today's omnipresent model of screen feminism, the smart, ass-kicking action hero. Two supporting actresses are unfamiliar by name and face: Samantha Jones as Lisa and Julie Harrod as Susy's 14-year-old neighbor Gloria. Jones has a chilling scene in which Lisa's corpse hangs in a makeshift body bag in Susy's closet, and Susy, unaware, almost bumps into it. Both actresses are so good that viewers will wonder why they didn't have more prominent careers. (I don't know either.) One bit of casting may be distracting to viewers in 2017 in a way that it wasn't to audiences in 1967: as Carlino, the fine character actor Jack Weston is almost a dead ringer for New Jersey Gov. and failed 2016 Republican Presidential hopeful Chris Christie. (He's now running again- Ed.)

Besides "Take a Look in the Dark", the Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray includes two trailers also repeated from the 2003 DVD. One, titled the "warning trailer" ominously cautions that "during the last eight minutes of this picture, the theater will be darkened to the legal limit to heighten the terror of the breath-taking climax." As a gimmick for luring curious masochists into the movie theater, it doesn't quite rise to the truly inspired heights of William Castle's "Emergo", "Percepto", or "Punishment Poll", but it's still a charming bit of vintage Hollywood hucksterism.

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FRED BLOSSER IS THE AUTHOR OF "SAVAGE SCROLLS: VOLUME ONE: SCHOLARSHIP FROM THE HYBORIAN AGE". CLICK HERE TO ORDER ON AMAZON

Imprint, the Australian video label, is releasing a boxed set dedicated to the film of Marlon Brando. The discs are region-free. The edition is available for pre-order. 

One of the greatest actors of all time, Marlon Brando, brings six powerful performances to this Limited Edition boxset. Sayonara (1957) The Fugitive Kind (1960) One-Eyed Jacks (1961) The Ugly American (1963) Bedtime Story (1964) A Countess From Hong Kong (1967) Limited Edition 6-Disc Hardbox. 1500 copies only. Cinema Retro's Lee Pfeiffer and contributing writers Paul Scrabo and Tony Latino provide commentary tracks for "A Countess from Hong Kong" and "Bedtime Story". 

Click here to pre-order. (Prices are in Australian dollars.)

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Don Knotts came to fame with his trademark comedy style of portraying a meek, excessively nervous character. He was Woody Allen before Woody Allen was Woody Allen. Knotts honed his skills on Steve Allen's show in the 1950s, with his "man on the street" Nervous Nellie routine sending audiences into fits of laughter. He co-starred with fellow up-and-comer Andy Griffith in the hit Broadway production of "No Time for Sergeants" and the subsequent film version. When Griffith landed his own TV series in 1960 in which he played the sheriff of fictional small town Mayberry, Knotts imposed upon him to write a small, occasional part he could play as Barney Fife, Griffith's inept but loyal sheriff. Griffith complied and the role made Knotts an icon of American comedy, allowing him to win an astonishing five Emmys for playing the same character. Five years into the series, Knotts was offered a multi-feature deal by Lew Wasserman, the reigning mogul of Universal Pictures. Knotts took the bait and enjoyed creative control over the films to a certain degree. He could pretty much do what he wanted as long has he played the same nervous schlep audiences wanted to see. The films had to be low-budget, shot quickly and enjoy modest profits from rural audiences where Knotts' popularity skewed the highest. His first feature film was The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, released in 1966 and written by the same writing team from the "The Andy Griffith Show". (Griffith actually co-wrote the script but declined taking a writing credit.) The film astonished the industry, rolling up big grosses in small markets where it proved to have remarkable staying power. Similarly, his next film, The Reluctant Astronaut also proved to be a big hit, as was his 1969 western spoof The Shakiest Gun in the West.  Within a few years, however, changing audience tastes had rendered Knotts' brand of innocent, gentle humor somewhat moot. By the late 1960s audiences were getting their laughs from the new film freedoms. It was hard to find the antics of a middle-aged virgin much fun when you could see Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice cavorting in the same bed. Still, Knotts soldiered on, providing fare for the drive-in markets that still wanted his films. In 1969 he made The Love God?, a very funny and underrated film that tried to be more contemporary by casting Knotts as an innocent ninny who is manipulated into fronting what he thinks is a magazine for bird watchers but, in reality, is a cover for a pornography empire. Knotts' traditional audience balked at the relatively tame sex jokes and for his final film for Universal, How to Frame a Figg, he reverted back to his old formula. 

Released in 1971, Figg casts Don Knotts as the titular character, Hollis Figg, a nondescript wimp who toils as an overlooked accountant in a basement of  city hall. The film is set in a Mayberry-like small town environment but any other similarity ends there. In Mayberry, only the visiting city slickers were ever corrupt. The citizenry may have been comprised of goofballs and eccentrics, but they were all scrupulously honest. In Figg's world, however, the top government officials are all con-men and crooks. They are ruled by the town's beloved paternal father figure, Old Charley Spaulding (Parker Fennelly), a decrepit character who hands out pennies to everyone he encounters, with the heart-warming greeting "A shiny penny for your future!" In fact, Old Charley  has plenty of those pennies stashed away. He and his hand-picked fellow crooks, including the mayor and police chief, have been systemically ripping off the state by grossly inflating the costs of local building projects and secretly pocketing the overages. Concerned that the accountants might get wind of their activities, they summarily fire them all except for Figg, who is deemed to be too naive to ever catch on. They justify the firings by saying it's fiscally prudent and replace the accountants with a gigantic computer that is supposed to be even more efficient. Through a quirk of fate, Figg and his equally naive friend, Prentiss (Frank Welker), the janitor for city hall, discover exactly what is going on. Figg dutifully reports his findings to the mayor (Edward Andrews), who convinces him to keep it secret while he launches his own investigation. Old Charley, the mayor and their cohorts decide to make Figg the fall guy for the corrupt practices. They give him a big promotion, a new red convertible and even hire a private secretary for him. She's Glorianna (Yvonne Craig), a leggy femme fatale who wears mini skirts and oozes sex. When her attempts to seduce Figg leave him paralyzed with fear because of his allegiance to his new girlfriend, the equally virginal waitress Ema Letha (Elaine Joyce), Glorianna gets Figg drunk, takes some embarrassing photos of him and then proceeds to have him sign a stream of incriminating documents that he has not bothered to read. Before long, Figg is blamed for all the missing funds and faces a jail sentence- unless he and the dim-witted Prentiss can figure out how to use the computer to thwart the real crooks. 

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

Celebrate the 40th anniversary of the heartfelt drama TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, arriving for the first time on 4K Ultra HD as part of the Paramount Presents line on November 14, 2023 from Paramount Home Entertainment.   

James L. Brooks produced, wrote the screenplay (based on the novel by Larry McMurtry), and made his directorial debut with TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, which ultimately earned 11 Academy Award® nominations and won for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress in a Leading Role (Shirley MacLaine), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Jack Nicholson), and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.

Both critically acclaimed and a box-office blockbuster, TERMS OF ENDEARMENT features a powerhouse cast including Debra Winger, Shirley MacLaine, Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, and John Lithgow.  Originally released on November 23, 1983, the enduring classic follows the ups and downs of a mother-daughter relationship with honesty, heart, and humor. 

This Paramount Presents release includes the film in sparkling 4K Ultra HD, with a transfer from the original camera negative reviewed and approved by Brooks.  The set includes a 4K Ultra HD Disc, a Blu-ray Disc™, access to a Digital copy of the film, as well as a brand-new Filmmaker Focus with James L. Brooks. In this newly recorded interview, Brooks reflects on the challenges and excitement that came with being a first-time director, including getting directing critiques from Jack Nicholson. He also discusses the casting process and the film’s amazing performances.  The set also includes a legacy commentary with director James L. Brooks, co-producer Penney Finkelman Cox, and production designer Polly Platt, as well as the theatrical trailer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Lee Pfeiffer

Only a week after we congratulated David McCallum on his 90th birthday comes the sad news that he has passed away from natural causes in New York City, where he resided. I have nothing but wonderful memories of the time I spent with him. Like most boys who grew up in the spy rage of the 1960s, I became a big fan of "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.", though I had admired his work in "The Great Escape" and "The Greatest Story Ever Told" even before then. His portrayal of Judas in the latter film was particularly haunting because he played him as a tragic and sympathetic figure. The success of "U.N.C.L.E." unexpectedly thrust David and his co-star Robert Vaughn into becoming international teenage idols. It was a distinction neither man had sought. At the height of the mania, David was to appear at Macy's in New York to promote his record album. The event was besieged by screaming teenage girls to such a degree that the police had to call the event off and hide David until the crowd had dissipated. The show ran from September, 1964 through January, 1968. Although David and Robert enjoyed their time on the series and were grateful for the fame and  fortune they gained from it, both men were eager to move on. David worked steadily in feature films and in live theater. Many years later, he landed the role of pathologist "Ducky" Mallard on the hit CBS series "NCIS". As the years went by, David joked to me that he kept trying to quit the series due to his advanced years but the producers always found a way to keep him on board. He seemed to love every minute he worked on the series.

What many people don't know is that David, the son of an acclaimed conductor in his native Scotland, was also a talented musician, arranger and composer who had some acclaimed albums in the 1960s. In recent, years he tried his hand at writing novels and found success in that endeavor, as well. At one point, I reunited David with my good friend, actor Joe Sirola, who had played a villain on a couple of episodes of "U.N.C.L.E." It gave me great pleasure to see them reignite their friendship and David would show up at Joe's legendary summer party on the terrace of his New York penthouse. When Dave Worrall and I began publishing Cinema Retro 20 years ago, David was a contributor. He was always reluctant to talk about himself and his career, but after one interview session he said he found it "therapeutic" to recall so many wonderful times in the acting profession that he had not thought about in many years. A very special evening occurred in 20009 at The Players, the legendary club for the arts in New York City. I was hosting a black tie dinner in honor of Robert Vaughn. During the cocktail hour he said, "I only wish David could have been here." Shortly thereafter, David and his wife Katherine did show up, causing many sophisticated middle-aged women to gasp with delight. David had told me he couldn't make the event but at the last minute he found a way to attend. It was a wonderful evening, especially when David gave a marvelous and touching speech about his former co-star. Years later, it would pain me to have been the one to break the news to David that Robert had passed away.

David was first married to actress Jill Ireland and the couple had three children: Paul, Jason and Valentine. After they divorced, David met and married Katherine Carpenter in 1967. They had two children: Peter and Sophie. David adored his wife and family and always spoke of them with great pride. 

While I mourn David's passing, I take solace from the fact that he did not suffer and was surrounded by laughter and love for most of his life. In an increasingly cynical age, David represented the vanishing attributes of graciousness and modesty. I had left him a phone message on his 90th birthday and had planned to get together with him soon. That won't happen but I can appreciate the time I spent with him over the years. He was a talented actor and musician, a good family man and a person who left his mark on the profession he loved. Thanks for the memories, David.  

By Lee Pfeiffer

If something seems too good to be true, it's probably going to turn out to be too good to be true. Amazon Prime's streaming service has offered an exceptional library of new, original series and films as well as a treasure trove of retro movies that can be streamed commercial-free. That will come to an end in early 2024 when "ad-free" streaming will now command an additional monthly fee of $2.99 in the USA for customers who currently pay $14.99 a month. International customers will presumably be charged the approximate amount in local currency. There will be no increase in fees if you're willing to see classic movies interrupted by advertisements. If you're reading Cinema Retro, you're probably as snooty as we are about how we watch the movies we love. However, the truth is that the general public is very undemanding when it comes to movie viewing. That's how American cable TV channels can still find people who will sit through a telecast of  censored versions of "Apocalypse Now" or "Jaws" along with many other classics with accompanying ads for everything from cars to hemorrhoid medicine. While it isn't our intention to carry water for Amazon, the increased price still seems reasonable for gaining access to so many films including plenty of titles that are not available on home video. For more, click here. 

By Sheldon Hall

*SPOILERS*

The problem with McVicar (1980) as a biopic is that the part of its subject’s life I most wanted to know about is covered in a brief caption at the very end. A closing intertitle informs us, if we didn’t already know, that John McVicar (1940-2022), a career criminal handed consecutive prison sentences totalling 23 years, eventually left behind his life of crime to gain a first-class honours degree while still behind bars and become a successful journalist and author. Indeed, he co-wrote the screenplay, based on his published memoir. But this fascinating turnabout is not part of the film’s story, which ends in 1970 after he is put back inside following a prison break and violent bank robbery.

What we have instead is a conventional tale of porridge and solitary on the inside, awkward family life on the outside. Although McVicar is competently played by The Who front man Roger Daltrey (who co-produced the film and also performs some songs on the soundtrack), there is little here to suggest that beneath the hard-man surface lay an articulate intelligence with a sharp understanding of the social causes of criminality. The script prefers to revel in the aggressive bravado with which he taunts prison officers, instigates riots, tunnels out of the shower block and risks re-arrest after escape. McVicar’s attempts to bond with his young son are sentimental rather than sensitive, all the film’s energy coming from its criminal elements.

Directed by Tom Clegg, a specialist in TV crime shows who also made Sweeney 2 (1978), it has a surface authenticity slightly belied by the high-definition transfer on Fabulous Films’ Region B Blu-ray, which makes the photography look more glossy than it probably did on first release in cinemas (where it achieved substantial commercial success, placing twelfth among UK general releases of 1980). In the scenes set in Durham Prison, the actors playing the screws try slightly too hard with their Geordie accents (all ‘bonnie lads’ and ‘kiddas’) but this makes for an effective clash with the mainly cockney prisoners. Cheryl Campbell’s role as McVicar’s wife is predictably thankless but Adam Faith (another pop star turned capable actor), Billy Murray, Steven Berkoff and Ian Hendry all fulfil their generic requirements admirably.

The extras, on what has been dubbed ‘Break-out Edition’, are an informative making-of, with contributions from the genial Daltrey, co-producer Bill Curbishley and music composer-arranger Jeff Wayne, and a short interview by actor Keith Allen (who is not in the film) with the real McVicar, recorded late in his life. He tells a sad and fascinating tale, more interesting than anything in the main feature.

(Sheldon Hall is the Copy Editor of Cinema Retro magazine.) 

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By Todd Garbarini

The first time that I heard of the name Nat Segaloff was in 1990 when I purchased his new book at the time, Hurricane Billy: The Stormy Life and Films of William Friedkin. I eagerly read through it in no time as The French Connection, Mr. Friedkin’s Oscar-winning film for Best Picture and Best Director among others, is my favorite film. It was his fifth feature as a director, and it put Mr. Friedkin on the map following the disappointing box office performance of his first four films. However, the critical praise and box office success of this real-life-inspired police drama which contains two of cinema’s greatest action set pieces would not truly prepare audiences for his follow-up film.

Mr. Friedkin’s The Exorcist, a film adaptation of the best-selling 1971 William Peter Blatty novel of the same name, opened theatrically on Wednesday, December 26, 1973 on no less than twenty seven theater screens, one of which was the Cinema 57 which was part of the Sack Theatre chain in Boston, MA. Mr. Segaloff was a publicist and was tasked with playing door guard to a top-secret pre-arranged screening of the film on Christmas morning to a handful of critics who were there to get their reviews in their respective papers earlier than usual. This incident is recounted in his preface to his latest book, The Exorcist Legacy: 50 Years of Fear, the title of which brings to the forefront the shocking revelation of just how many years have transpired since Regan MacNeil’s head spun around. The film is something that I had heard about for years prior to becoming a fan of scary cinema and I was unsure how much of it was rumor or fact. I recall purchasing The Exorcist on VHS in February 1986 seven months before I saw The French Connection. It was in the oversized clamshell box by Warner Home Video and while I was impressed with it, it did not scare me in the slightest. However, I have spoken to other people who saw the film in their teenage years and refused to view it ever again. A September 1996 viewing of the film to a sold-out screening at Radio City Music Hall, introduced by both lead actress Ellen Burstyn and the director in-person, solidified the film’s stature as a masterpiece in my mind. The release of the film on DVD in a 25^th anniversary edition whetted the appetite of those who would see the film theatrically two years later when The Exorcist: The Version You’ve Never Seen was released which would include changes and additional footage. The Blu-ray of the film in 2010 in the extended director’s cut was by no means the final word, as in 2013 a 40th anniversary Blu-ray added a nice documentary and extended interviews with the author. Just in time for the 50^th anniversary, the film is now bowing in 4K UHD.

Following a foreword by John A. Russo of Night of the Living Dead fame, Mr. Segaloff begins his book, which is comprised of sixteen chapters and lasting just over three hundred pages in length, from the correct presumption that the film is a misunderstood classic. He agrees with the assessment by both Mr. Blatty and Mr. Friedkin that the film is many things except the horror film that it is widely revered as since the time of its release, though audiences have other opinions. We are treated to many interesting tidbits: the hilarious story of how Mr. Friedkin met Mr. Blatty and how the former’s honesty solidified a working relationship and lifelong friendship with the latter, with Mr. Friedkin being the sole director that Mr. Blatty wanted from the get-go; Warner Brothers’ initial reluctance to hire Mr. Friedkin until the release of his brilliant The French Connection in 1971 garnered sudden critical and financial success and changed the game completely; the original 1949 real-life case of a young possessed Maryland boy; Mr. Blatty’s writing of the novel; the making of the film; a multitude of issues that beset the film’s production giving way to the supposed “curse” on the set; the controversy surrounding the release of the film; in-depth looks at the much-maligned Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) and the superior The Exorcist III (1990), the latter both written and directed by Blatty; the prequels and television series, and the little-known The Ninth Configuration. If you’re even just a passing fan of the film, the book is a must read.

Mr. Segaloff was gracious enough to speak with me from his home in Los Angeles by phone regarding the book. Unfortunately, the day I contacted him about the interview was the same day that Mr. Friedkin had passed away, a fact that I was unaware of until an hour later. Mr. Segaloff wanted to press on with the interview, however, which amazed me as he knew Mr. Friedkin for nearly fifty years.

Todd Garbarini: Where are you from originally?

Nat Segaloff: I was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, which is a good long way from Cottage City, Maryland, where that little boy was possessed in 1949. We were not possessed in Silver Spring. Silver Spring was a very strange place. It was the nation’s largest unincorporated city, about one hundred thousand people, and nobody taking out the garbage.

I was able to leave and go to school in Boston, and there, I not only ran the major movie program on campus, I also insinuated myself into both the city’s professional film scene and the then-burgeoning underground film scene. Of course, we’re talking the 1960’s.

When I graduated from college, I started doing publicity for the film companies in town and, after a while, moved to New York to do it there, then moved back to Boston and became a critic. All of that served as fodder for the books I’ve written and for the people I’ve met because I’m a kind of a demimonde. A lot of people remembered me from when I was a publicist, but then when I became a reporter, they thought I was still a publicist, and they trusted me. It’s a very odd combination, and I sometimes had to tell people, “You know, I’m a reporter now.” I was able to keep close to a lot of people that I’d met doing publicity, like Robert Altman, James Bridges, Paul Mazursky, and John Milius.

TG: A lot of people I’ve spoken with who work in the film industry didn’t go to the movies or even see films on television until they were much older. Did you do the same thing, or did you get into them later?

NS: Back when I was a pod, the only way to see an old movie was on late-night television. I stayed up till one-thirty in the morning to view The Jazz Singer on Washington television because there was no way I was otherwise going to see it. There was no video, and you couldn’t even rent a 16-millimeter print of it. Later, there were revival theaters in Washington where I attended occasionally, but you still had to wait for something to appear. Only when I went away to school and ran the film program was I seeing movies every weekend, because I had to make sure people weren’t smoking in the theater. That was my job. I was managing the campus theater. I saw a lot of movies in class and in theaters, and it was wonderful. Between that and being a critic, I must have spent thirty years watching a couple of movies a week, and then I just burned out completely.

TG: As much as I love watching movies, I don’t know that I would be able to do that! Do you have an all-time favorite movie?

NS: The easy answer is Citizen Kane. It certainly is the source of so much inspiration and technique for everybody who makes movies. I don’t think it’s possible to cite one particular film. Whatever pleases you at the time that you’re open to, it’s a film that becomes your favorite. I also like His Girl Friday. No connection between those, except they’re both about newspapers.

TG: Are you drawn to movies about reporters and publicists?

NS: It turns out that I am drawn to movies about reporters. Certainly, Sam Fuller’s Park Row is a movie that makes me cry, not because it’s sad, but because it reminds me of the days when I was writing for real newspapers. No, I don’t find myself glomming onto any particular kind of film, be it science fiction, horror, drama, musical, or anything else. I just like a good movie.

TG: So, you don’t consider yourself partial to certain genres?

NS: I think that so many genres, particularly horror or suspense films, seem to have a playbook, and I don’t like films that go where you know they’re going to go. I remember something Jonathan Demme said about the script for his film Something Wild. He said you literally didn’t know from one page to the next what was going to happen. I like to see that on the screen. I like films that have what I call an “Oh, shit!” moment. The first one I remember was, of course, 2001: A Space Odyssey, just before the intermission, when we realized that HAL was reading the astronauts’ lips, and that was the moment where the whole audience sort of exclaimed, “Oh, shit!” [laughs]. There are also other movies like A Beautiful Mind with that kind of moment, or a movie that very few people remember that Stephen Fears made called Dirty Pretty Things.

TG: Yes, that’s with Audrey Tautou from Amelie.

NS: Yes. I was watching it in a small theater, and not only did we all say, “Oh, shit,” but we all stayed through the credits and then stood up and congratulated each other after the movie for seeing that film.

TG: You’ve written and published a good number of books on The Towering Inferno, the Scarface films, the Hollywood Code, John Milius, William Friedkin and Harlan Ellison. Your latest book, The Exorcist Legacy: 50 Years of Fear, is quite an accomplishment. It begins on Christmas Day in 1973. You were working for the Sack Cinema 57 on Stuart Street in Boston.

NS: Yes. I was their publicity director in 1973 when The Exorcist was scheduled to be released on Wednesday, December 26^th. One of our critics, Stuart Byron, who knew the industry really well, was able to inveigle William Friedkin to permit a day-before screening so that the weekly papers, which catered to the young audience, would be able to meet their deadlines. So, I hosted this greeting of The Exorcist on Christmas morning.

For some reason, the critics had no problem leaving the bosom of their families to come and see a movie about a little girl whose head spins around. I didn’t see the movie that day. I was standing in the lobby guarding the door so the people who weren’t invited couldn’t get in. Nobody got sick. We didn’t know we were supposed to throw up. Of course, the Technicolor yawns began the very next day.

TG: Did you have any inkling what that film was like? Based upon the lobby cards, the marketing of the film by Warner Brothers, did you have any idea what was going on behind those doors?

NS: I had no idea what was going to be going on, “on this street in that house in a little girl’s bedroom.” [laughs] I had read the book, of course. The only glimpse we had was a teaser trailer that went 30 seconds with the narration I just did for you. It was simply a shot of the poster of Max von Sydow standing outside of the house. That’s all anybody knew. There were no pictures, nothing. In fact, there was an embargo on anything from the film. I think it was either Time or Newsweek who ended up sued by Warner Brothers because somebody sneaked into the theater and got a picture of Regan in makeup and ran it. That was considered a breach of copyright, a very secret thing. The audiences, as you know, would file out ashen. The audiences waiting to get in would know that something weird was going on in there, and it became an emotional rollercoaster for them.

TG: Now, I of course, didn’t live through this. Was this a similar reaction like when Psycho came out? Psycho had been a novel first, and then the film was released and it was all hush-hush, “don’t give away the ending.”

NS: I wasn’t old enough to see Psycho when it came out. I do know, of course, that Hitchcock specified that nobody be allowed in once the film had started. That made a certain groundswell of public opinion. The film that was closest to The Exorcist when I was that age was Night of the Living Dead, which had a reputation for being gross, scary, and horrifying. The fact that it was shown at midnight to a bunch of kids who were probably high made additional impressions on people. A black and white film with blurry pictures from an indie source in Pittsburgh was not the same thing as a beautifully photographed color film from Warner Brothers. Incidentally, John Russo, who co-wrote Night of the Living Dead, wrote the forward to The Exorcist Legacy.

TG: What was your introduction to William Friedkin’s work? Had you seen any of his previous films?

NS: I had seen The Birthday Party. It was on a sneak preview where Walter Reade’s Continental Releasing was trying to get a booking for it, and I saw it in Boston. That wasn’t the film that I was there to see. The Birthday Party was just stunning. Robert Shaw, Patrick Magee, I mean, just a beautifully contained job. I’d also seen The Night They Raided Minsky’s, and thought it was lovely, but I didn’t really realize it was a William Friedkin film. I had missed Good Times with Sonny and Cher, which I’ve seen since then. Then of course, The French Connection came out. I was late seeing The Boys in the Band because I was in school at the time when it played in theaters. I caught it later. The French Connection naturally was the one that galvanized everybody. In fact, at the theater that showed it in Boston, which is where I was working at the time, people would come in early when they knew that the car chase was going to start, and they’d see the chase and stay through to watch the film all through again so they could get in and see the chase twice. We had to clear the theater. It was remarkable with that on a huge screen. The vertigo was just phenomenal. It was just a staggering effect because I don’t think anybody had ever mounted a camera on the bumper of a car before Billy did it.

TG: That’s what blows me away about his cinema. He did things that we had never seen before.

NS: Yes, including racing through the streets of New York without permits. Randy Jurgensen will tell you one thing. Sonny Grosso would tell another. Billy Friedkin would tell you something else. There’s no agreement. From what I understand, and I trust Randy, is that they simply ran the car. They didn’t have any siren on the car to warn people because, as Randy said, if you put a siren on the car, people look at the car and they don’t want people looking at the car. Billy sat in the back, Bill Hickman drove, and they just tore ass through Brooklyn. If anybody stopped them, Randy said he’d just flash his badge saying, “Fellow officer, let us go.” You could do that then. You could get away with it.

TG: So much of what you could get away with, you can’t do now because of small security cameras and the Internet.

NS: Yes. We’re living, as John Milius said, under the booted foot of the lifeguard state.

TG: How did this book about The Exorcist Legacy come about? When did you start thinking about it? Had it been something gestating in your mind for some years? Had you started writing it a long time ago in anticipation of the 50th anniversary?

NS: I could tell you my publicity line, which is that I’ve been possessed by The Exorcist for 50 years, but in fact, I’d acquired a wonderful new agent, Lee Sobel, at the end of 2020. We were thinking what kind of books we could possibly sell. Anniversary books seemed to work well. What film was having a 25th, a 40th, or a 50th anniversary? We figured, well, with a year and a half or two of lead time, that makes it 2023. I said, “The Exorcist is going to be 50.” Bang, he sold it in a matter of days.

TG: Did you approach John Russo specifically to do the forward?

NS: John Russo was approached by my editor, James Abbate, who knows him and has worked with him. He very graciously did the forward to the book.

TG: Yes, John is very nice. I go to horror conventions that they have and most of the cast of my favorite horror films come and speak about them. Night of the Living Dead was one of them. I got to meet John there and talk with him at length about the films and all. I just love the behind-the-scenes stories that you haven’t read and haven’t been published. It gives you a real look into the film, a new appreciation, of the movie, whatever that movie may be.

NS: There are some very good people out there. The great thing about writers is that we tend to help each other. Whenever I need an author’s query or information, it’s always the writers who come through first, like yourself.

TG: As far as The Exorcist Legacy is concerned, who was the first person you spoke to? Did you go straight to Billy?

NS: I didn’t go to Billy at all for The Exorcist Legacy. There was a reason for that, which is that I had all the answers I needed back in 1988 to 1990 when I wrote his biography. In those days, The Exorcist was merely a hit. It wasn’t a classic yet. The stories, I believe, were closer to the source. I also had the good fortune to speak to Ellen Burstyn, whom I adore, and who I believe is our finest American actress of our generation.

TG: I agree, she’s phenomenal.

NS: She’s amazing. I had spoken to William Peter Blatty at great length. We’d been friends and kept in touch over the years. A lot of his material in the book is material that I could not publish while he was alive. He was very frank about his relationship with film studios. As he hand-wrote on the side of a transcript that I sent him for approval, as you do, he said, “Nat, don’t print this. I’ve got enough problems.” He was a warm, funny, and wonderful man. I’ve become friends with his oldest son, Mike, since the book came out. In fact, I saw him at a signing the other day. He happened to be in town. I’m very happy to keep up my connection with the Blatty family.

TG: Oh, sure. Whom did you speak to at great length for the book?

NS: I did it two years ago and it was with Terry Donnelly, who was the first assistant director and unit manager. I had worked on a film with Terry years ago. We picked up where we left off and he was able to tell me about the behind-the-scenes facets. I spoke to Craig McKay, who is a film editor. He cut The Silence of the Lambs among other films. He’s very good. He was a kid when he was starting out on The Exorcist, there to pick up pieces. He had some wonderful stories. I did speak to Jeremy Slater, who was the showrunner for the Exorcist television series, and of course, David Gordon Green, who has a new Exorcist film coming out. I had a lot of the material from when I wrote Hurricane Billy (Billy’s biography). I was able to use that. What can I say, covering all these films, two sequels, two prequels, and each of them was recut? It was a lot to write about.

TG: How do you keep track in your head just of all these different versions of these movies? As much as I love films, I really find it so hard to be able to keep track of the director’s cut, or the original cut, and this one runs this number of minutes, etc. I’ve always admired Tim Lucas’s review of movies in Video Watchdog for that reason because it’s encyclopedic, the amount of information that he has on all these films and how he would do all the video comparisons. How did you find doing that? Was that something that came easily to you because you had seen the film so many times in different versions?

NS: Tim Lucas is one of the people in the book, as is Mark Kermode. We’ve known each other for so many years that we don’t even think about it. With the different versions of The Exorcist, which I’m not very happy with, I guess, three of them, or maybe four, depending on if you count one of them twice, I think the original is the best version, except for a couple of scenes that are put in “The Version You’ve Never Seen,” so it’s very hard. I would like to do my own fan edit, but I think I’ve watched The Exorcist enough by now.

TG: Was there anybody you wanted to interview for this book whom you weren’t able to interview because they either passed away or you were unable to contact?

NS: Linda Blair.

TG: What was the first Billy Friedkin film that you were on the set of?

NS: The Brink’s Job in the summer of 1978. I was there for Evening Magazine, which was the version of PM Magazine that was run on the stations that were owned by Westinghouse.

TG: Oh, I remember PM Magazine. That’s where I first saw Matt Lauer.

NS: Billy allowed our cameras on the set, which is funny because he just kicked the publicity cameras for Paramount and Universal off the set, and he let us on. We had wonderful footage of Peter Falk and the cast. Dean Tavoularis had done a reconstruction of the Brink’s system as it was in 1951 when the robbery took place. It was a magnificent set. There was an incident where some local tough guys broke into the editing offices, took footage, and wanted to hold it for ransom to shake down the production. As it happened, I had the only footage of Brink’s and I was with a TV station, but I couldn’t get my TV station to run their own footage because we had shot non-union. That was Westinghouse. That’s why they’re not around anymore. Westinghouse was the Pazuzu of television. I was also on the set of one of Billy’s films in Montreal when I was writing the book (the 1988 TV-movie C.A.T. Squad: Python Wolf). You don’t learn a whole lot on a set. William Goldman is right. The most exciting day of your life is your first day on a movie set, and the most boring day of your life is your second day on a movie set.

TG: I’ve seen a handful of films being shot. It’s fairly boring, I must say.

NS: I will correct you on one thing. Billy Friedkin didn’t allow chairs on his sets. You stand around.

TG: Christopher Nolan is like that. He doesn’t allow them either.

NS: He’s right! James Cameron has a nail gun (like in No Country for Old Men), and if anybody’s cell phone rings, he nails it to a prop.

TG: Holy Jeez! Is there anything that I haven’t covered that you wanted to say about the book?

NS: The book goes into not just the original Exorcist, but the sequels and prequels. That’s something that people don’t consider because nobody ever intended The Exorcist to be a franchise. It became a franchise when Morgan Creek bought the rights from Bill Blatty, and they are now trying to revive it, of course, with the October release of The Exorcist: Believer.

TG: Have you seen that?

NS: No, I haven’t seen it yet. I’m looking forward to it. I do know that I really like David Gordon Green, who was very kind to me. He probably shouldn’t have been talking about the film. He did because I had a year and a half lead time for the book, and it’s in there. I was disappointed in the prequel, both Dominion, which was Paul Schrader’s version, and Exorcist: The Beginning, which was Renny Harlin’s. Although I think there’s a lot in Paul Schrader’s version, I’ve been saying the difference between them is that Paul Schrader made a film where Renny Harlan made a movie. I think that both films had trouble because people expect an exorcism Exorcist movie and what they got was CGI. That’s not the same thing. CGI is not the real thing. That’s what distinguishes The Exorcist; what made The Exorcist work was that it was real. The things that happened in front of the camera actually happened. Linda Blair really floated, the bed really shook, doors really cracked, things really fell over. Curtains really blew on closed windows. They didn’t happen because anybody was possessed. They happened because Dick Smith created brilliant makeup and Marcel Vercoutere had incredibly complicated mechanical effects, but they all happened in front of the camera so that it looked real. That’s the documentary nature of Billy’s filmmaking and why he believes in reality. That, I believe, will be his ultimate legacy on film, which is that he made the movies look real. Of course, now most of the movies look like fantasy. We’ve lost that.

TG: Yes. Steven Spielberg would agree with that statement. He likes to see everything real in front of the camera. He does realize that in today’s day and age, you do have to use computer graphics, and that’s really came to fruition with Jurassic Park. Before that, he wondered how they were going to make the dinosaurs run.

NS: It’s true. He tried stop motion, but he didn’t want to make Jurassic Park until he could do it right. Not everybody has that. They’ll say, “Well, the audience won’t know.” No, no, they know. The audience doesn’t know what’s called the uncanny valley, but it is the uncanny valley.

TG: I want to thank you very, very much for taking the time to speak with me about the book.

NS: Thank you so much. I do want to say something about Billy who, as you know, died just twenty-two days shy of his 88th birthday. He was a friend for fifty years and an inspiration, not just for his films, but for his personality: he didn’t cotton to bullshit which, of course, is the coin of the realm in Hollywood. Billy was a very brave man because I can’t think of many other directors, except maybe Brian De Palma, who let somebody write a book about them while they were still working. He did that for me and launched my career as a writer. I love him and I miss him. And thank you, Todd and Cinema Retro, for giving me the chance to say that on the record.

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RETRO-ACTIVE: FROM THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVES

By Lee Pfeiffer

Although I have a weak spot for Italian westerns of the 1960s and 1970s, most can be appropriately evaluated by paraphrasing Longfellow: "When they were good, they were very, very good, and when they were bad, they were horrid." "Blindman" is a curiosity from 1971 that I previously panned after viewing an allegedly "remastered" DVD edition that looked barely better than a VHS transfer.  The film fits rather comfortably into the latter part of Longfellow's famous nursery rhyme. Although the movie has a devoted fan base, when I first reviewed it I call it "a pretty horrid experience and inexcusably amateurish in execution, given the well-seasoned people involved". The good news is that Abkco Films has released a truly remastered DVD version that considerably improves one's perception of the film. As the title implies, it's about...well, a blind man. He's played by Tony Anthony, who did rather well for himself as a sort of Clint Eastwood Lite character known as The Stranger in a series of Euro Westerns (Any similarity to Eastwood's Man With No Name must have been purely coincidental). Anthony went on to star in any number of lucrative, low-budget action films, the most notable being "Comin' At Ya!, a 3-D flick that has also built a loyal cult following.  His co-star in "Blindman" is Ringo Starr. More about him later. The film was based on a Japanese movie titled "Zatoichi" about a blind samurai hero. As with "The Magnificent Seven", which was based on Kurasawa's "Seven Samurai", the story has been transplanted to the American west. When we first see the Blindman (whose name is never mentioned), he rides into a one-horse town and confronts his former partners. Seems they had a lucrative contract to deliver 50 mail order brides to some horny miners. However, a better offer was made from a Mexican bandito named Domingo (Lloyd Battista), who has exported them South 'O the Border to force them into prostitution. Blindman apparently has a sense of honor in terms of fulfilling the original contract. He manages to kill his former partners and sets off to Mexico to rescue the women, presumably so they can sold into another form of prostitution. At first the premise of this film intrigued me. How, after all, can you logically present a story about a blind gunslinger? The answer is you apparently can't. You could get away with it if the film was a satire, but there is surprisingly little overt humor in "Blindman". Yes, in true Eastwood fashion, the hero sometimes makes some snarky quips before, during and after dispatching his adversaries, but for the most part, the film takes itself far too seriously. 

How does the Blindman find his way around? Well, he has his own "wonder horse" who seems more like a companion than a beast of burden. The hoofed hero is always at his disposal and seems to be able to do everything but read a map for him. Speaking of maps, Blindman gets to various destinations by running his finger over maps that engraved in leather...sort of a braille system. Given the fact that he has to navigate the state of Texas, then Mexico, one would think he would require maps the size of rolls of kitchen linoleum, but somehow he gets by with navigational tools that fit neatly into his pocket.  When Blindman arrives in Mexico, he has numerous confrontations with the brutal Domingo and his army of thugs. He suffers the ritualistic beatings of any hero in the Italian western genre, but always manages to get the better hand by his deadly use of the rifle that he uses as a walking stick. Somehow the Blindman can use instinct and an uncanny hearing ability to gun down his would-be assassins with uncanny precision, though occasionally he does impose on some allies for advice. He also confronts Candy (Ringo Starr), Domingo's equally sadistic brother, who is keeping a captive woman as his mistress. What follows is a seemingly endless series of  chases, confrontations and the obligatory imitation Morricone score, all of it under the pedestrian direction of Ferdinando Baldi, who has a revered reputation with some fans of the genre and does manage to set off some impressive explosions. (Amusingly, the concept of showing the "50" mail order brides must have taxed the limited budget so we only get to see them in small clusters.). There are a couple of sequences that stand out in terms of creativity. One involves the surprise slaughter of a barroom filled with Mexican soldiers. The other has a bit of suspense as the Blindman is served a food bowl that he doesn't realize contains a deadly snake. The finale of the film finds Blindman wrestling with Domingo, who has been blinded by a cigar! (Don't ask...) It's supposed to be a tense confrontation, but the sight of the two blind guys rolling around in the dirt looks like an outtake from a Monty Python sketch.  The most intriguing aspect of the film is what led Ringo Starr into appearing in it. He had considerable on-screen charisma that he parlayed into a successful acting career. Here, however, his role is colorless and bland. He doesn't even play the main villain, but rather a supporting character who disappears from the story before the movie even reaches the one-hour mark. Starr supposedly was looking to jump-start his film career and worked with Tony Anthony to develop this production. While he acquits himself credibly, he might have at least given his character some memorable lines or characteristics. 

The previously reviewed version of the film pointed out that the packaging had indicated the film had a running time of 105 minutes, which matches with the original timing cited on on the IMDB site. However, the screener we reviewed ran only 83 minutes and it looked like it had been edited with a meat cleaver. The ABCKO version is the actual 105 minute cut and the transfer is excellent, a vast improvement over the muddy mess we had previously reviewed. Seeing "Blindman" again under these conditions has allowed me to reevaluate my opinion of the film. While it certainly never rises to the standards of a Sergio Leone production, the movie's quirky premise and the amusing performance by Tony Anthony made the experience far more enjoyable the second time around. 

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We congratulate David McCallum on his milestone 90th birthday....and not showing any signs of slowing down! David has always been there for Cinema Retro, making numerous contributions over the last 20 years. Aside from his acting talents, David is also the epitome of a true gentleman.  

By Lee Pfeiffer

In the wake of their success co-starring in John Huston's The Maltese Falcon, Warner Brothers realized they had captured lightning in a bottle with the teaming of Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. The studio quickly paired the two character actors again in the Bogart films Casablanca and Passage to Marseilles. In 1944, Warners decided to give Greenstreet and Lorre what amounted to starring roles in the thriller The Mask of Dimitrios, based on the Eric Ambler novel and set in pre-WWII Europe. (Lorre received fourth billing in the film behind Greenstreet, Zachary Scott and Faye Emerson, but in terms of screen time, he is the star of the movie.) Lorre plays Cornelius Leyden, a mild mannered crime novelist who is visiting Istanbul, where he becomes intrigued by the murder of a man named Dimitrios, who was a local legend in terms of his criminal activities. Dimitrios's body has washed ashore, as shows evidence that he has been stabbed to death. Sensing a good story in the murder, Leyden pursues the man's background and finds out he was known throughout Europe for his audacious crimes. Leyden decides to track down those who interacted with Dimitrios, including jilted partner and abandoned girlfriends. All agree that he was a charismatic cad who worked his way up from petty crimes in Istanbul to being an integral part of Europe's pre-war espionage activities. Leyden is followed in his footsteps by Peters (Sydney Greenstreet), an affable man of mystery who is also obsessed with tracking down Dimitrios's acquaintances and activities leading up to the man's death. After a rocky introduction at the point of Peters' gun, the two men forge an alliance and travel through Turkey, Yuguoslavia and finally Paris in their quest. Along the way, they determine that Dimitrios is very much alive and well, having used another man's murder as an opportunity to fake his own death. Peters is determined to use that information to blackmail Dimitrios and thus ensure acquiring enough money to afford a comfortable retirement. 

Much of the story is told in flashbacks as various individuals relate their experiences with Dimitrios to Leyden and Peters. As played by Zachary Scott, Dimitrios lives up to his legend as handsome womanizer and persuasive businessman, though each of his friends and partners ends up being abruptly jilted in some manner, as Dimitrios moves on to his next scam. (Jack Warner had high hopes for Scott becoming the studio's next great leading man, but his interest in promoting Scott seemed to wane and the actor never really acquired the stardom that his role in this film would seem to have assured.) Leyden and Peters also meet Irana, an entertainer in a squalid Istanbul cafe, who relates how Dimitrios became her lover and ensured that her fortunes improved. However, when she loaned him her savings, he abandoned her, never to be heard from again. Although nursing a broken heart and bearing resentment for the man on one level, she admits she still carries a torch and his abandonment of her left her in a depressed state of mind that still continues. (Apparently, once you've experienced Dimitrios, no other man comes to close as a lover.) As Leyden and Peters close in on their prey, the stakes become higher - and they realize their lives are very much at risk.

The Mask of Dimitrios, ably directed by Jean Negulesco, is a joy to watch. It doesn't have the artistic pretensions of The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca, but it is a thoroughly entertaining movie. Lorre and Greenstreet's "Mutt and Jeff" act continues to present them as essentially the same character in film after film, but that doesn't in any way compromise the delight of watching these two eccentric actors at the peak of their careers. The supporting performances are also equally delightful and the film bares all the rich artistic hallmarks of a WB release from the era. 

The Warner Archive has released the film on DVD. The transfer is excellent. An original trailer is included that features specially-filmed footage of Greenstreet and Lorre addressing the audience. The DVD is region free but it's time for a Blu-ray release! 

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Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Paramount:

Hailed as “the biggest and best action movie of the year” (Screen Rant), the edge-of-your-seat, non-stop thrill ride MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE—DEAD RECKONING Part One becomes available to buy on Digital for fans to watch at home starting October 10, 2023.  The blockbuster hit will debut on 4K Ultra HD SteelBook^™, 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray™, and DVD on October 31^st.

“Tom Cruise is at the top of his game” in “the best ‘Mission’ ever” (KTLA-TV) that’s loaded with “next level action and thrills” (Entertainment Weekly).  Certified Fresh with a stellar 96% critic score^* on Rotten Tomatoes,® MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE—DEAD RECKONING Part One received widespread acclaim and a coveted “A” CinemaScore from fans.

Fans who purchase the film on Digital can go deeper into the mission with extensive, action-packed bonus content.  Get an inside look at how Tom Cruise and the filmmaking team pulled off multiple breathtaking stunts, go behind-the-scenes of the exotic filming locations, delve into spectacular footage not seen in theatres, learn about the intricacies of the filmmaking process with director Christopher McQuarrie and editor Eddie Hamilton, and more!  Bonus content is detailed below:

• Commentary by director Christopher McQuarrie and editor Eddie Hamilton—McQuarrie and Hamilton take viewers through each compelling scene with in-depth commentary.

• Abu Dhabi—Explore the exotic filming locations in the desert and at the international airport and discover how each thrilling sequence was shot.

• Rome—Take a behind-the-scenes look at the thrilling car chase through Italy's historic capital, as Tom Cruise's driving skills are pushed to the limit while handcuffed to Hayley Atwell!

• Venice—See the breathtaking city of Venice as it's never been shown on film.  Plus, witness the cast's dedication and commitment to their training as they prepare to get "Mission Ready."

• Freefall—An extended behind-the-scenes look at one of the biggest stunts in cinema history.  Watch never-before-seen footage of the rigorous training as Tom launches a motorcycle off a cliff.

• Speed Flying—Join Tom and the crew as they explain the various training techniques involved in pulling off the dangerous speed flying stunts in the film.

• Train—See how the climactic train sequence was captured on film.  From building an actual train from scratch to crashing it using practical effects, you don't want to miss this!

• Deleted Shots Montage—Director Christopher McQuarrie and editor Eddie Hamilton share some of the breathtaking, never-before-seen footage that didn't make the final film.

• Editorial Featurette: The Sevastopol—Director Christopher McQuarrie and editor Eddie Hamilton take viewers through the intense opening scene.

Synopsis

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his IMF team embark on their most dangerous mission yet: To track down a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity before it falls into the wrong hands. With the fate of the world at stake, a deadly race around the globe begins. Confronted by a mysterious, all-powerful enemy, Ethan is forced to consider that nothing can matter more than his mission - not even the lives of those he cares about most.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE—DEAD RECKONING Part One is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some language and suggestive material.

PARAMOUNT PICTURES and SKYDANCE Present

A TOM CRUISE Production TOM CRUISE “MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - DEAD RECKONING PART ONE”

HAYLEY ATWELL VING RHAMES SIMON PEGG REBECCA FERGUSON VANESSA KIRBY

and HENRY CZERNY Casting by MINDY MARIN, CSA

Music by LORNE BALFE Costume Designer JILL TAYLOR Film Editor EDDIE HAMILTON, ACE

Production Designer GARY FREEMAN Director of Photography FRASER TAGGART

Executive Producers DAVID ELLISON DANA GOLDBERG DON GRANGER

TOMMY GORMLEY CHRIS BROCK SUSAN E. NOVICK

Produced by TOM CRUISE CHRISTOPHER McQUARRIE

Based on the Television Series Created by BRUCE GELLER

Written by CHRISTOPHER McQUARRIE & ERIK JENDRESEN

Directed by CHRISTOPHER McQUARRIE

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

By Lee Pfeiffer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Matt Helm Movie Classics special edition is now sold out! Thanks to so many of our loyal readers for making this the fastest selling issue since we began publishing.

Here is a brief newsreel of the festivities taking place at the 1962 New York premiere of MGM's "Mutiny on the Bounty", a magnificent epic even though there were almost impossible obstacles to overcome in bringing it to the big screen. (See Cinema Retro's Movie Classics roadshow epics issue for full coverage). Despite causing controversies during filming, Marlon Brando was induced to attend the premiere, a practice he was usually adverse to. Note the theater marquee across the street showing John Frankenheimer's "The Manchurian Candidate".

Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Fabulous Films regarding the Region 2 Blu-ray and DVD releases of "Manhattan" and "Hannah and Her Sisters", which are being released on 28 August. 

One of Woody Allen’s best-loved films, Hannah and Her Sisters, won three richly deserved Oscars and is considered a joy from start to perfectly-judged finish.

The films ensemble cast includes Max von Sydow, Carrie Fisher, Sir Michael Caine, Diane Wiest, Lloyd Nolan (who died 4 months before the film's release), Mia Farrow and Daniel Stern. Caine won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role while Wiest won Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Allen won Best Screenplay (beating Crocodile Dundee, My Beautiful Laundrette, Platoon and Salvador). Max von Sydow and Barbara Hershey received a standing ovation from the crew after they finished filming their characters' break-up scene.

The film has some great one-liners, with a philosophical discussion about the nature of good and evil getting shot down with “How should I know why there were Nazi’s, I don’t even know how the can opener works”

Synopsis: Hannah (Mia Farrow) is a devoted wife, loving mother and successful actress. She’s also the emotional backbone of the family, and her sisters Lee (Barbara Hershey) and Holly (Dianne Wiest) depend on this stability while also resenting it because they can’t help but compare Hannah’s seemingly perfect life with theirs. But with her husband Elliott (Michael Caine) becoming increasingly interested in Lee, it’s clear that Hannah might have problems of her own.

Cast: Woody Allen, Michael Caine, Mia Farrow, Carrie Fisher, Barbara Hershey, Lloyd Nolan, Maureen O’Sullivan, Daniel Stern, Max von Sydow, Julie Kavner, Richard Jenkins, Fred Melamed, Lewis Black, Joanna Gleason, John Turturro, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Dianne Wiest.

Extras: Theatrical Trailer

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“One of (Woody) Allen’s most enduring accomplishments” - BoxOffice

Nominated for two Academy-Awards® Manhattan is a wry, touching and finely rendered portrait of modern relationships set against the backdrop of urban alienation. Sumptuously photographed in black and white (Allen’s first film in that format) and accompanied by a magnificent Gershwin score which includes Rhapsody in Blue.

Released in 1979. Manhattan won Best Film and Best Screenplay at the BAFTAs. Mariel Hemingway aged 16 years old earned a nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards for her performance. Woody Allen and Marshall Brinkman were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. In 2001, the United States Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Synopsis: Forty-two-year-old Manhattan native Isaac Davis (Allen) has a job he hates, a seventeen-year-old girlfriend, Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), whom he doesn’t love, and a lesbian ex-wife, Jill (Meryl Streep), who’s writing a tell-all book about their marriage...and whom he’d like to strangle. But when he meets his best friend’s sexy intellectual mistress, Mary (Diane Keaton), Isaac falls head over heels in lust! Leaving Tracy, bedding Mary and quitting his job are just the beginnings of Isaac’s quest for romance and fulfilment . In a city where sex is as intimate as a handshake - and the gateway to true love...is a revolving door.

Cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Michael Murphy, Mariel Hemingway, Meryl Streep, Anne Byrne.

Extras: Theatrical Trailer

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Please note: the U.S. office of Cinema Retro will be closed for vacation between August 21-September 7. You can place orders as you normally would and shipments will resume when we reopen. Thank you. 

Here's a regrettably grainy but ultra-rare shot from the Cinema Retro archive, circa June 1966. It depicts a chance meeting of two major spy movie stars of that year, as Michael Caine bumped into George Segal on location in Berlin. Caine was reprising his Harry Palmer in Funeral in Berlin while Segal was shooting The Quiller Memorandum. Remember, every issue of our magazine edition is packed with rare photos and production ads you've never seen, so subscribe today!

VISIT THE HARRY PALMER WEB SITE. CLICK HERE!

 

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

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

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

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

By Tom Lisanti

A few years ago, actress-turned-playwright Carol Hollenbeck had a Zoom meeting with a theatre group and mentioned this fabulous red-carpet premiere in her hometown for a movie she made in the sixties. About a month later, the group met again on Zoom and one of the group members said to Carol, “By the way, I found your movie.’ She quickly asked, “What movie?’ “Eden Cried,” he replied. Carol was flabbergasted. That film had been lost for almost fifty years and from her perspective it should have remained lost.

Carol Hollenbeck was a starstruck teenager who had been fascinated with Hollywood from a young age. She candidly admitted, “I didn’t want to become an actress. I wanted to be a movie star.”

Arriving in Hollywood in the early 1960s, she unfortunately suffered the pitfalls many naïve young women fell victim to. However, using the stage name of Carole Holland, she did have some small successes greatly aided by the fact that she was a beautiful, shapely, baby doll blonde.

Carol’s looks and poise no doubt helped her land a job as a showgirl in a stage production of Irma La Douce, starring Juliet Prowse at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. Carol recalls, “Juliet was engaged to Frank Sinatra at the time. She was very outspoken and yelled a lot.” She donned bikinis for a few of the non-AIP beach movies such as The Girls on the Beach. And her adoration of Jean Harlow gave her an indirect connection to Joseph E. Levine’s Harlow starring Carroll Baker and a direct connection to Bill Sargent’s rival Harlow starring Carol Lynley. She actually met with Sargent to discuss her possibly playing the thirties sex bomb. Alas, it did not come to be. [Carol discusses her Harlow experiences in my upcoming book Dueling Harlows: The Race to Bring the Actress’s Life to the Silver Screen from McFarland and Co.]

What did materialize was the female lead in the low-budget oddity, Eden Cried, which was also known as In the Fall of ’55 … Eden Cried. It was shot in 1965 but not shown until 1967—two years after Frankie and Annette had hung up their surfboards. It was a sort of adult, soap opera-ish Beach Party, set in Malibu supposedly during the mid-1950s (but everything from the costumes to the beach scenes to dance moves scream 1960s), that showed what life was like for teenage beach denizens off the sand. There is a fair amount of surfing footage and scenes of young people partying on the shore.

To alleviate all the histrionics, there is narration (that was not in the movie when it premiered) provided by a Jack Nicholson sound-alike who makes a lot of amusing, sardonic remarks about the characters and put-downs about Southern California living in general. It is done in a way that evokes those dead serious 1950s documentaries where they warned viewers about juvenile delinquency or impending bomb threats or predatory homosexuals. It also connects scenes due to missing or excised footage.

Carol has some good dramatic moments as rich girl Lorraine Parker (a sexy blonde with a big bouffant and a bad reputation) new to her high school. She falls for rebellious senior Skip Galloway (Tom P. Pace), a surfer and grease monkey with a bitchin’ hot rod. Pace, who was in his thirties at the time but looked forty-five, is so miscast that it is off-putting seeing him romance the more age-appropriate Carole or confiding to Larry Reimer as his best friend Rich or just hanging on the sand with the teenage beach and surfing crowd. Lorraine and Skip have a tumultuous, up-and down-relationship fueled by a drag race that ends in tragedy; her disapproving father (Victor Izay); infidelity (tired of taking it slow, Lorraine has sex with Rich); a suicide attempt (Lorraine downs some dolls after Skip leaves her) that leads to a quickie marriage, and an unwanted pregnancy that breaks the couple up. This is where the film abruptly ends without the requisite happy ending. It also promises a sequel that never came to be—thankfully.

After its 1967 premiere in Newburgh, Eden Cried was not released theatrically. Unbeknownst to Carol, it surfaced in January of 1972 (it is speculated the narration was added at this point) and was screened in a few theaters in Los Angeles. Then in April, it popped up in Atlanta before falling back into obscurity. In both cities, the nostalgia appeal for the fifties/early sixties was highlighted in its print ads to draw audiences. This was just ahead of the Broadway stage musical Grease and George Lucas’ film American Graffiti—both of which became box office hits.

As far as Carol knows, after being shown in Atlanta, Eden Cried was never televised and remained a lost film until a few years ago when it surfaced on DVD (from Video Screams). It has now become a cult curio especially for fans of 1960s drive-in movies. Carol recently appeared at a screening of the movie and is planning on attending more of them.

Cinema Retro: How were you cast in Eden Cried?

Carol Hollenbeck: I blocked it out regarding how I was cast. I really do not know. However, if I was to venture a guess, it was because of all the publicity I was getting at the time. My press agent was grooming me to be the next Marilyn Monroe. The media dubbed me “Hollywood’s Mystery Girl” because I was being photographed at discotheques and movie premieres. My face turned up in many newspapers.

CR: Do you know what the title means?

CH: It comes from the lyrics to the movie’s theme song [written by John Bambridge, Jr. and sung by Walter Rowen]. I felt that the title meant young love gone wrong...

CR: What did you think of the ridiculous casting of Tom P. Pace as your seventeen-year-old boyfriend?

CH: Tom was almost thirty-five. But it is Hollywood’s mentality. I will tell you why. Everybody knew he was too old. Somebody—probably one of the producers—said, ‘I want him. I don’t care how old he looks, I want him.’ And that was it. He was not physically right for the part, but they wanted him anyway. With me I was a few years older than seventeen but I did have an appropriate California blonde beach look. The public is fixated on that American blonde image. It has always fascinated me about the blonde myth, the blonde fantasy—the Marilyn Monroe-type.

CR: What do you recall about the film’s director and screenwriter, Fred Johnson?

CH: Fred was very young. We were all young—well except for Tom Pace. I think Fred did the best he could and was a good writer.

CR: How did it come about that Eden Cried had its premiere in your hometown of Newburgh, New York?

CH: I believe someone from Walter Reade Distributors thought of it. Eden Cried had its premiere on June 10, 1967. They flew me from Hollywood to New York. I was treated like a star. In Newburgh, they named a street after me called “Carole Holland Way,” but it was only for two weeks. I was so nervous that I didn’t go into the theater to watch it. My family and friends knew it was not very good but did not come right out and say so. They were nice about it.

CR: Do you know why it did not get a national theatrical release at that time?

CH: It got caught up in some kind of squabble between Walter Reade and the producers, so it ended up being shelved.

CR: What were your feelings like after hearing that the film was never going to be seen?

CH: Even though the film was not great, I thought I did a fairly decent job and it could have helped me get other roles. But I did not stay in Hollywood long enough to promote myself and get the film footage out, so people could see it. I just chose to dislike it and put it out of my mind. So, when it got lost and nobody saw it, I didn’t care because I didn’t believe it was going to take me anywhere. I walked around for many years with shame for making this film. It didn’t seem to bring me any happiness.

CR: What did you do after leaving Hollywood?

CJ: I moved to New York and continued acting for a bit. I did commercials and had day parts on soap operas such as Love Is a Many Splendored Thing and As the World Turns. I appeared in a number of Off-Broadway plays and a few movies, most notably Tootsie where I played an autograph hound in a scene with Jessica Lange. In the nineties, I began writing for local newspapers and then the National Enquirer. I then joined a women’s ensemble group and began playwrighting. Two of my plays, Funky Fifties and The Lifters, were nominated for the Samuel French Best One Act Plays Award.

CR: Did you ever try to find Eden Cried?

CH: In 2017, we did a reading of my play Hometown Premiere at the Ritz Theatre in Newburgh, where the film premiered. The staff of the theatre searched for Eden Cried because they wanted to use a clip of it in the staged reading, since the play was loosely based on the film’s premiere. It could not be found.  I thought then, ‘Perhaps I should accept that I did the movie, but I won’t ever find it,’

CR: When Eden Cried finally surfaced on DVD what was your reaction?

CH: It was being sold on DVD by Sinister Cinema.com and I purchased a copy. What they did to salvage the film, is they added a narration that pokes fun of the sixties’ era. I really liked that. The film is so corny that it’s funny. The narration gives the film a Mystery Science Theater touch.

CR: After watching fifty years later, what surprised you the most?

CH: That I had so many costume changes.

CR: What are your feelings today toward the movie today?

CH: I have done a 180-degree turnaround. It is like a cult film. Now everything in my apartment is Eden Cried. The framed movie poster is on my wall. There are twenty-four products with the Eden Cried poster on it—t-shirts, tote bags, coffee mugs, hoodies, pillows, etc. When I couldn’t find it, I was glad I couldn’t. But when I found it, I was glad I did. I have embraced it and absolutely love it.

(Look for Carol Hollenbeck’s upcoming novella, A Moment of Blonde Madness and Tom Lisanti’s upcoming books, Ryan’s Hope: An Oral History of Daytime’s Groundbreaking Soap from Citadel Press/Kensington Books and Dueling Harlows: The Race to Bring the Actress’s Life to the Silver Screen from McFarland and Company.)

(Photos courtesy of Tom Lisanti and Carol Hollenbeck.)

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