BY JOHN M. WHALEN

Two men drive across the blazing Nevada desert and stop at the bridge leading to the town of Chuckawalla. Eddie Bendix (John Hodiak) remarks to his companion Johnny Ryan (Wendell Corey) that the bridge hasn’t been repaired since they were last here. We learn that there was some kind of accident that took place a while ago and Eddie was involved. Driving up behind them, honking the horn on her Chrysler wood-trimmed Town and Country convertible, comes 19-year-old Paula Haller (24-year-old Lizabeth Scott), freshly kicked out of yet another school, on her way to stay with her mother, Fritzi (Mary Astor). The chance meeting sets off sparks between the two, much to the dismay of Eddie’s friend Johnny. Uh-oh, what’s up with that?

Paula drives into town and stops at the Purple Sage Saloon, which her mother owns, along with the police chief, the mayor, and most of the town. On the way Paula runs into Deputy Sheriff Tom Hanson (Burt Lancaster), who has been carrying a torch for her since she left for school. While they’re talking out in the street in front of the saloon, Eddie and Johnny roll into town, and we see the start of a romantic triangle between Paula, Tom, and Eddie, or is it a rectangle, since Johnny seems pretty angry with Eddie over the attention he’s paying Paula.

Turns out Fritzi is not in the Purple Sage, so Paula drives out to her rather large home out on the desert, where we discover her relationship with mom is a bit strange as well. At first Fritzi seems like a 1940s version of a helicopter mom, but as the story goes on there’s something obsessive about the way she wants to run Paula’s life. In one scene a thunderstorm awakens Paula, and Fritzi pops in and offers to sleep with her like she did when she was little. Paula says thanks but no thanks. Uh-oh, what’s up with that?

As the story progresses, we learn that Eddie is a gambler and has come to stay at a ranch near town before setting up a gambling operation in Las Vegas. We learn his wife was killed in the accident at the bridge when her car plunged into the river. Johnny takes care of Eddie but is a little over-protective, which is starting to get on Eddie’s nerves, especially since Paula’s arrival on the scene. At one point Johnny threatens to kill Paula if she doesn’t leave Eddie alone. So we have two characters, Eddie, and Paula, both in the clutches of people who want to control them. Even Tom, the deputy, is guilty of wanting to control Paula, when he warns her to stay away from Eddie. He knows he’s no good. He tells Paula that she’d better be careful, because she looks a lot like Eddie’s late wife. Paula runs from both her mother and Tom and just naturally has to fall in love with the bad guy.

“Desert Fury” is based on a novel by Ramona Stewart, and was adapted for the screen by Robert Rossen and an uncredited A.I. Bezzerides. The screenplay shows a lot of Bezzerides touches. The screenwriter of “They Drive by Night”, “Thieves Highway,” and “Kiss Me Deadly” specialized in stories about flawed characters who cannot overcome their defects and are driven to their fate by them. In this case both Paula and Eddie seem to be weak characters who both need and, at the same time, are repelled by those who want to dominate them. When they try to escape this web of entanglement it merely sets off a disaster.

This is the kind of movie that should be listed in the dictionary as the definition of “potboiler.” It’s got more pots boiling than a kitchen in a Chinese restaurant. There are even more sordid twists, as we learn more about Fritzi’s background, and her relationship years ago with Eddie, as well as the truth about what happened to Eddie’s wife.

“Desert Fury” has been called the “gayest film noir ever made.” Stewart’s source novel reportedly is much more open about Johnny and Eddie’s relationship, which is strongly implied in the movie, but never explicitly stated. Audiences were not ready to see gay relationships on the screen in 1947.

BY MARK CERULLI

Forty eight years ago, United Artists continued their series of highly profitable Bond double features by releasing arguably the biggest 00 double bill of them all – Thunderball and You Only Live Twice. Both films had coined money on their initial releases, with Thunderball being the highest-grossing 007 film of that era – in fact, of many eras, right up until Skyfall in 2012. Thunderball earned a stunning $141 Million worldwide (over one billion dollars in today’s money), a number that must have had UA’s finance department humming the Bond theme at 727 Seventh Avenue. You Only Live Twice pulled in over $111 Million worldwide, its profits squeezed perhaps by a competing Bond film, the over-the-top comedy, Casino Royale with Peter Sellers, David Niven, Terence Cooper and Woody Allen as various Bonds or an Italian spy knockoff starring Sean Connery’s younger brother, Neil. (More on that later.)

Throughout the 60s, 70s and into the early 80s, United Artists cannily fed the demand for Bond with double features that also served to ignite audience interest between new films. The double-bills were pure cash cows for the studio – the movies had already been produced and paid for, so all UA had to do was book the theaters, buy TV, radio and print advertising, then, as Bond producer Cubby Broccoli was fond of saying, “Open the cinema doors and get out of the way.”

As a (very) young Bond fan in New York City, the exciting double feature TV spots for “The Two Biggest Bonds of All” got my attention and I desperately wanted to go. My father, an advertising and music executive, thought noon on a Saturday was the perfect time – instead we were greeted with a line around the block and a sold out show. Apparently that satisfied my dad’s interest in the movies because we never went back. Almost five decades later, I still regretted missing those two fantastic films on the big screen…

Enter Quentin Tarantino. Throughout July, his New Beverly Theater in LA ran most of the classic Bonds in vintage 35MM IB Technicolor prints, reportedly from his own collection. (The IB refers to “imbibition”, Technicolor’s patented die-transfer process resulting in a richer, more stable color palette.) So while there was no 4-hour, action-packed double feature for me, I finally got to see both films in 1960s 35MM, only a week apart. Even fifty years later, they didn’t disappoint: Thunderball remains a bonafide masterpiece. Fortunately Quentin owns a very good print, so the colors were still lush and it was fairly scratch-free. The main titles set to Tom Jones’ timeless song still popped in an explosion of colors and sound effects. The scenes of Domino and Bond meeting on a coral reef were hauntingly beautiful. The frantic Junkanoo chase fairly jumped off the screen and Thunderball’s iconic underwater battle is still a showstopper. (The filmmakers cleverly refrained from wall-to-wall music so the sequence incorporated underwater breathing and other natural sounds. Kudos again to 00 audio genius, Norman Wanstall.)

You Only Live Twice is a true epic and only the master showmen, Monsieurs Broccoli and Harry Saltzman could have pulled it off. They reached into the highest levels of the Japanese government to secure a lengthy shoot in what was then a very exotic location in a much bigger world. Japan was almost a character itself in their sprawling space age tale that occasionally bordered on sci-fi. Much has been written about Ken Adam’s volcano crater, but seeing it on a big screen really brings out his mind-blowing vision, especially during the climactic battle where the “ninjas” rappel down from the roof as controlled explosions rock the set. One can only imagine how that went over with 1967 audiences who had never seen anything like it. Putting it in context, Tarantino had selected various spy-themed trailers to run before the film – including The Wrecking Crew, The Venetian Affair and The Liquidator. Although they were all successful and well made, their sets and action sequences looked positively cheap in comparison to a Bond film.

Both features starred a young, vibrant Connery whose acting chops were on full display. Connery played Bond for real. He made you believe… once you bought into him as 007, then his strapping on a jetpack to fly over a French chateau, or a SPECTRE construction crew hollowing out a volcano - in secret - to create a rocket base seemed totally plausible. Sure Connery had put on a few pounds between Thunderball and Twice, but he was still fit and looked fantastic in his custom-made suits. And his fight with Samoan wrestler Peter Maivia (grandfather to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) in Osato’s office is still one for the ages.

(Above: Mie Hama joins in celebrating Connery's birthday on the set.)

As most Bond students know, Twice was a grueling shoot for the mercurial star. He was subjected to intense press and fan interest in a country that had gone wild for 007. Connery needed security to accompany him from location trailer to set. Going out for a quiet dinner was out of the question – even visiting the loo was off limits after an overzealous photographer poked his lens into Connery’s toilet stall! But if he was feeling angry or bitter about his situation, he was too much of a pro to let it show in his performance. In spite of the pressures, there were some good times on the Twice shoot during the furnace hot Asian summer of 1966 – now-famous photos show Connery-san laughing with lovely Mie Hama at his 36^th birthday party on location, or back at Pinewood, smiling at Donald Pleasence during a light moment in the control room that even had Blofeld’s hulking bodyguard (actor Ronald Rich) laughing in the background.

BY TODD GARBARINI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BY BLYTHE-SPINDLER RICHARDSON  

With the star power of Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, a riotous score by Cole Porter, sensational choreography, and truly eye-popping Technicolor, on paper     Vincente Minnelli’s The Pirate has all of the trappings of the smash hit musicals of the Golden Era, though went on to be an example that this mathematical equation to success in the film industry was not as predictable as it appeared. As a reinterpretation of S.N Behrman’s play by the same title, which poked fun at the tropes of the swashbuckler genre, the film traipses into the less traversed waters of satire, actively differentiating from the mainstream musical narratives of the time arguably to a fault. Despite being one of Minelli’s most notorious box office flops and having been eroded from cultural consciousness unlike its cinematic relatives such as An American in Paris or Meet Me in St. Louis, a quiet but impassioned debate has survived into modernity; is The Pirate a lost experimental masterpiece that dared to explore the social taboos of 1940s American culture, or a forgettable misstep with glaring tonal and narrative inconsistencies?

The musical interlude of “Mack the Black” over the opening credits fittingly establishes the stark oscillation in the tone of the narrative, beginning with frantic ensemble vocals coupled with throbbing drums and blaring horns, it warns of the pirate Macoco and his tirades, then jarringly dissolves into tender, romantic string instrumentals to guide the audience into the first scene. On a balcony over her candy-coated, dreamy Caribbean hometown, Manuella Alva (Judy Garland) fauns over the story of Macoco much to the chiding of her friends and Aunt Inez, who reveals that she has arranged for her niece to marry the wealthy but utterly drab mayor, Don Pedro. Reluctantly, Manuella agrees to the purely practical marriage on the condition that she is able to visit the Caribbean Ocean during their stay in the coastal town of Port Sebastian while picking up her wedding dress, as the sea to her “means adventure and romance, and [she] won’t have any” after committing herself to the self-admitted homebody Don Pedro. Immediately enchanted by the ocean view upon her arrival with Aunt Inez, Manuella is not prepared for the ruckus of the newly docked thespian troupe in town led by the boyishly charismatic and mischievous actor Serafin (Gene Kelly), who interrupts her sea gazing by ruthlessly circling her and admiring her beauty to her chagrin. Vehemently rejecting both Serafin’s pleas to attend the troupe’s show that evening and to marry him instead of her “pumpkin” of a fiancé, Manuella rushes back to her hotel, only to toss and turn that night due to the sheer volume of the show in the town square. She finally relents and joins the crowd to see the troupe, and Serafin gleefully prepares for his pinnacle act, a hypnosis using the “Great Mesmer’s Revolving Mirror” in order to coax Manuella to confess her love for him, though the plan backfires when Manuella instead raves of the dashing pirate Macoco in her trance, her full frenzied passion conveyed through her rendition of “Mack the Black”. Conflicted with his romantic disappointment and captivation with Manuella’s unbridledly showmanship, Serafin snaps her out of the spell with a passionate kiss and attempts to praise her performance, but she is so horrified by her acts that she immediately flees Port Sebastian with Aunt Inez in tow. Settled back and home, Manuella’s wedding preparations are dashed when Serafin’s company loudly marches into town, and the actor makes a scene of stealing into her room via tight wire. On the surface, Manuella is hysterical about the intrusion, but internally struggles with the feelings of excitement that Serafin prods her to admit. She escapes when Don Pedro barges in, enraged and armed with the obvious weapon of choice, a bullwhip, the licks of which Serafin leaps and frolics to avoid with fiendish delight, quickly utilizing the mayor’s Achille’s heel by bellowing the infamous name “Macoco!” As Don Pedro sinks to the ground in shock and defeat, Serafin reveals that the unassuming bureaucrat is the previously vicious but currently sick and retired pirate, having recognized his true identity due to being a survivor of one of his attacks. Using this delicate information, Serafin blackmails Don Pedro into letting the troupe perform for the wedding, only to exit the room as a powerful and sensual personification of Mack the Black, leading Manuella, her family, and the rest of the villagers to believe that he is the true Macoco. In order to spare the town from his wrath, he must have Manuella as his wife, the grand illusion of power and identity theft that carries the conflict of the film.

By Hank Reineke

On the eve of the November 1963 release of TWICE TOLD TALES, the British actor Sebastian Cabot would tell a reporter from the Copley News Service, "They've been after me to do more of the horror pictures with Vincent Price. I wouldn't mind that a bit, though I must say I wouldn't want to do them exclusively." He intimated that he and his co-star had discussed a possible future pairing in " light comedy" motion-picture. Alas, it was not to be; the two actors would not work together again. Cabot, of course, would soldier on and enjoy success as both a television personality and a recognizable voice-over actor. Following the passing of Boris Karloff in 1969, Vincent Price would reign as the big-screen''S uncontested "King of Horror". Cabot'S estimation of Price as an actor as "extremely adept at light-comedy" was incisive. Throughout his long and fabled career, Vincent Price;s on-screen ghoulishness would nearly always be mitigated with a wry smile and twinkle in the eye.

TWICE TOLD TALES is the second of two quickie vehicles in which Price starred for Robert E. Kent's Admiral Pictures, Inc. (1962-1963). For their first pairing, DIARY OF A MADMAN (released in March 1963 and distributed through United Artists), Kent mined the imagination of the great French short-story writer Henri-René-Albert-Guy de Maupassant. That film’s ballyhoo proclaimed it “The Most Terrifying Motion Picture Ever Created!” It most certainly wasn’t, but the film still managed to be a worthwhile psychological thriller - though one that didn’t particularly resonate at the box-office. In what was obviously an attempt to capitalize on the low-budget but big commercial success of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations for A.I.P, Kent quickly changed course and ambitiously turned to the short stories and novels of Nathanial Hawthorne for material.

Though a descendant of John Hathorne, the unrepentant magistrate who presided over the fate of several innocents during Salem, Massachusetts’s celebrated witch trials, Nathanial Hawthorne was a romanticist: he was not prominently a writer of mysteries or of fantastic fiction. Having said that, Hawthorne was not averse to penning a good ghost story or two and his talent had won him the praise of contemporaries. One such fan was Edgar Allan Poe himself. In his review of Hawthorne’s two volume collection of short stories TWICE TOLD TALES for Graham’s Magazine in May of 1842, Poe unabashedly pronounced the New Englander as “a man of truest genius… As Americans, we feel proud of this book.”

Of course Hollywood producers have always somehow managed to take great creative liberties with the acknowledged classics. Stories of cigar-chomping producers passing on tracts of classic literature so their stable of writers might “give ‘em a polish” are legion. Though Roger Corman’s series of Poe films both successfully and artistically mined the great man’s work for their tortured characters, grim atmosphere and elements of plot, Corman himself rarely offered filmgoers a straight-forward re-telling of any of the doomed author’s fabled tales.

Producer-writer, Robert E. Kent seems to have taken a similar, albeit far less successful, approach with his production of TWICE TOLD TALES. Only segment two of this trilogy film, “Rappaccini’s Daughter” closely resembles Hawthorne’s original story, and even that diverges when at odds with cinematic expectations. In “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment,” a sinister love-triangle between Dr. Carl Heidegger (the corpulent Sebastian Cabot), Alex Medbourne (Price) and the recently revived but still exquisite corpse of Sylvia Ward (Marie Blanchard) is re-engineered as to feature an original - if salacious - back-story. This “Virgin Spring” elixir-of-eternal-youth morality-fable plays out with little fidelity to the original tale.

Original comic book tie-in.

Such creative-license is stretched to the breaking point with the film’s final episode, “The House of the Seven Gables.” This segment bears little resemblance to Hawthorne’s celebrated novel, but it has borrowed elements from the better known – and far more lavish – 1940 Universal film of the same title. The Universal film, perhaps not coincidentally, also featured Vincent Price in a starring role, though this tale, too, strayed far from Hawthorne’s original. Though I recall no physical blood-letting in the Hawthorne novel, in TWICE TOLD TALES the sanguine red fluid pours freely– and mostly unconvincingly, it must be said - from ceilings, walls, portraits, and lockets. The Pyncheon’s family’s metaphorical skeleton-in-the-closet becomes all too real in this rather uninspired re-working.

Part of the film’s original marketing stratagem was the offer of “FREE COFFEE in the lobby to settle your nerves!” One might suggest, with a measure of cynicism, that such brew was a necessary component in helping to keep audiences awake. TWICE TOLD TALES is, to be generous, a very good ninety-minute film. The problem is that the filmmakers stretched this ninety-minute film to an interminable two-hour running time.

This is a “sitting room” or “parlor” film; most of the action (as it is) takes place in mildly claustrophobic confines of small home settings with long stretches of unbroken dialogue. There are very few provocative set-pieces employed over the course of three segments and the most ambitious of these, the deadly and poisonous garden of Dr. Giacomo Rappaccini (Price), is only experienced in sun-soaked broad daylight. This supposedly lethal garden is both terribly over-lit and ill-disguised in its construction (the seams of the faux-grass mats are clearly visible). As such, this potentially visual and cinematic garden of death portends little of its intended menace. If only love-struck suitor Giovanni Guasconti (Brett Halsey) could have encountered the beautiful but lethal Beatrice Rappaccini (Joyce Taylor) in a blue-swathed moonlight setting, the garden’s mysterious atmosphere would have been instantly heightened.

Kent’s too-wordy screenplay suffers occasional patches of purple prose, but it’s serviceable. There are a couple of great moments: Cabot’s toast of the glass prior to his experimental drinking of a fluid that may or may not kill him (“To eternal youth, or just eternity?”). In “Rappaccini’s Daughter” we’re not sure, at first, of who is a prisoner to whom. Is it the estranged daughter to the father, or the father to the daughter? When all is made clear, we can better understand the poisoned daughter’s bitter complaint, “The only difference from being dead is that this house is bigger than a grave.”

TWICE TOLD TALES is no classic, but it’s not unworthy of one’s time. Vincent Price is, as always, brilliant in all three of the villainous roles he inhabits. The supporting cast is mostly great as well, and Kent, unashamedly, brings aboard several of the familiar players who earlier worked with Corman on the Poe series. Director Sidney Salkow was, sadly, no auteur. Though he had been directing and writing films – and bringing them in under or on budget - for both independent and major studios as early as 1936, it’s clear he was most interested in producing a satisfying checkmark in the company’s profit ledger and not terribly concerned with film-as-art. Though Salkow’s films are never less than competent, they’re generally pedestrian and not particularly memorable. As helmsman, Salkow simply possessed none of Corman’s visual-style or displayed any ability to stage an impressive production on a shoestring budget.

To be fair, Corman had advantages. His gothic films were European in design: his settings were of torch-lit gloomy and brooding castles, of misty streets of cobblestone and black twisted tree-limbs. Two of the TWICE TOLD TALES, on the other hand, are set in the non-atmospheric repose of 19^th-century small-town America. With the small exception of a creepy sequence in which a thunder and lightning-storm disturbs a tomb that had been sealed for thirty-eight years (and sits, inexplicably, just to the rear of Dr. Heidegger’s back-door), the dressing that surrounds TWICE TOLD TALES demonstrates little of the macabre ingredients necessary for mounting a successful horror film.

This release from Kino-Lorber Studio Classics presents TWICE TOLD TALES for the first time in the U.S. in a Blu-Ray edition. The film is presented in Technicolor and in its original 1.66:1 ratio. Bonus features include an optional commentary from film scholars Richard Harland Smith and Perry Martin, as well as trailers for the title film as well as Corman’s TALES OF TERROR and BLACK SABBATH. A brief “Trailers from Hell” segment is also included, courtesy of Mick Garris.

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Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Park Circus:

Park Circus is delighted to announce that it will have two classic films feature in the line-up at Festival de Cannes 2019.

A stunning new 4K restoration of Moulin Rouge (1952) will screen as part of the Cannes Classics programme, with road movie classic Easy Rider (1969) also screening. Presented half a century ago on the Croisette, in Competition at the Festival de Cannes, the film won the Prize for a first work. Co-writer, co-producer and lead actor, Peter Fonda, will be in Cannes at the invitation of the Festival to celebrate this anniversary.

Set in the 19th century, Moulin Rouge is the story of the crippled artist, Toulouse-Lautrec (José Ferrer). He forgets his worries by drinking and mingling at the Moulin Rouge nightclub in Paris, where he sits and sketches the scenes he sees. Lonely and convinced his crippled state means he will be alone forever, he is delighted to meet Marie (Colette Marchand), a young girl in need of help. The two become lovers, but he soon learns she is being unfaithful. Crushed, he throws her out and attempts to carry on with his life.

The film scooped a host of awards, including two Academy Awards® in 1953 for Best Picture and Best Costume Design.

Moulin Rouge has been restored by The Film Foundation in collaboration with Park Circus, Romulus Films and Metro Goldwyn Mayer with additional funding provided by the Franco-American Cultural Fund, a unique partnership between the Directors Guild of America (DGA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs de Musique (SACEM), and the Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW).

Restored from the 35mm Original Nitrate 3-Strip Technicolor Negative. 4K scanning, color grading, digital image restoration and film recording by Cineric, Inc. Colorist Daniel DeVincent. Audio restoration by Chace Audio. Film processing and printing by FotoKem. Restoration Consultant Grover Crisp.

Presented in proud partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment, Easy Rider is a landmark road film which chronicles the search for freedom by two motorcycle-riding drifters (Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, who also directs) who meet up with an alcoholic lawyer (Jack Nicholson) in a southern jail. The lawyer gets them out and then joins them on their liberating journey. This unconventional classic, nominated for an Academy Award® (1969) for Best Original Screenplay, is a compelling mixture of drugs, sex and armchair politics, which continues to touch a chord with fans everywhere.

Easy Rider directed by Dennis Hopper (1969, 95 minutes, USA). Restored in 4K by Sony Pictures Entertainment in collaboration with Cineteca di Bologna. Restored from the 35mm Original Picture Negative and 35mm Black and White Separation Masters. 4K scanning and digital image restoration by Immagine Ritrovata. Audio restoration from the 35mm Original 3-track Magnetic Master by Chace Audio and Deluxe Audio. Color grading, picture conform, additional image restoration and DCP by Roundabout Entertainment. Colorist Sheri Eisenberg. Restoration supervised by Grover Crisp.

Reflecting on the line-up, new Park Circus CEO Mark Hirzberger-Taylor commented:

*Park Circus is once again honoured to be a part of the Cannes Classics line-up. Together with our studio partners we are privileged to present two seminal classics to the 72nd Cannes Film Festival. We also look forward to meeting our many exhibition and distribution partners, with whom we are delighted to partner to bring so many wonderful films back to the big screen worldwide*

BY FRED BLOSSER

“The Adventures of Robin Hood,” which aired on CBS from 1955 to 1959, was an early example of a television series produced in the U.K. and imported by an American network into U.S. living rooms with great success -- a forerunner of numerous hit shows to follow from across the Atlantic, including “The Avengers,” “Secret Agent/ Danger Man”, too many “PBS Masterpiece Theater” favorites to list, and more recently “Downton Abbey.” It was also an early example, replicated as well by “Downton Abbey,” of a popular TV series leveraged into a big-screen theatrical movie. The year after “The Adventures of Robin Hood” ended its U.S. network run, its producer Sidney Cole and star Richard Greene created a feature-film version, “Sword of Sherwood Forest,” in partnership with Hammer Studios, for release here through Columbia Pictures. Although supporting roles were recast, Greene returned as Robin, and some principals from the series’ production crew were reunited as well. Director of Photography Ken Hodges returned, the screenplay was provided by Alan Hackney, who had scripted many of the episodes of the series, and the director was Terence Fisher, already a Hammer veteran, who had directed several series episodes. Media historians tend to characterize the TV and theatrical movie industries in the 1950s and early ‘60s as bitter rivals for viewership, but the two industries in fact often enjoyed a friendlier synergy of mutual convenience. In the case of “Sword of Sherwood Forest,” the popularity of the earlier series provided theaters with a built-in audience for the movie. In turn, the film reminded fans to watch for the syndicated reruns of the TV show, which continued to be broadcast on local stations well into the 1970s.

In the movie, which has been released on Blu-ray from Twilight Time in a limited edition of 3,000 units, a well-dressed, badly wounded man flees into Sherwood Forest, escaping from a posse led by the Sheriff of Nottingham (Peter Cushing). Through Maid Marian (Sarah Branch), the sheriff approaches Robin Hood with the offer of a pardon if he’ll turn over the wounded fugitive, but Robin refuses. He knows, even if Marian has yet to learn, although she quickly does, that the offer of clemency from his old enemy the sheriff “isn’t worth the breath he uses to make the promise.” The fugitive eventually dies from his wound, but not before passing along a brooch stamped with a mysterious emblem, and mentioning the name of a town, Bawtry. Leaving Little John (Nigel Green) to lead the Merry Men in his absence, Robin investigates with the help of Marian and Friar Tuck (Niall McGinnis). Gradually, they uncover a plot involving the charming but secretive Earl of Newark (Richard Pasco), his henchman the sheriff, an attempted land grab, a visit by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and plans to carry out a high-level assassination if the land grab fails.

BY FRED BLOSSER

Two 1960s murder thrillers with Joan Crawford have been released by Mill Creek Entertainment on single-disc Blu-ray. The cover sleeve bills the package as a “Psycho Biddy Double Feature.” The films are “Strait-Jacket” (1964), the first of Crawford’s three pictures with producer-director William Castle, and “Berserk!” (1967), her first of two with producer Herman Cohen. In using the possibly ageist and definitely sexist phrase “Psycho Biddy,” Mill Creek’s marketing department clearly hopes that audiences will have fond memories of the frenzied, middle-aged Joan Crawford in 1981’s “Mommie Dearest,” shrieking “I told you! No . . . wire . . . hangers -- ever!” at her terrified adopted child, Christina. Never mind that the belittling term “biddy” is problematic in the case of Joan Crawford. There may be plenty of biddies in the world, but the imperious Joan was never one of them. Never mind either that it was Faye Dunaway impersonating Joan Crawford in “Mommie Dearest,” not Crawford herself. For most casual movie fans, the distinctions are not likely to matter.

In “Strait-Jacket,” scripted by Robert Bloch, prosperous farm owner Lucy Harbin (Crawford) returns unexpectedly from a trip to find her younger husband (Lee Majors -- his first film role) in bed with another woman. Enraged, Lucy seizes an ax and butchers the pair as her young daughter Carol watches. Released from a mental institution twenty years later, Lucy is welcomed home by her brother Bill and her sister-in-law Emily (Leif Erickson and Rochelle Hudson), who have reared Carol in the meantime. Carol (Diane Baker) encourages her mother to ease back into a normal routine by looking and dressing as she had, two decades before. The gray-haired Lucy dons a black, ‘40s-style wig and trades in her dowdy outfit for a tight dress. The tactic goes awry when Lucy, drinking too much out of nervousness and getting tipsy, puts a move on Carol’s uptight boyfriend Michael. More stresses mount. Lucy hears things, sees things, and dreads meeting Michael’s even stuffier parents, who are unaware of her history. As they skip rope outside a store where Lucy is shopping, two little girls appear to be chanting, “Lucy Harbin took an ax . . .” Bill’s creepy, disheveled hired hand, Leo (George Kennedy, almost unrecognizable at first glance), asks if she wants to use his ax to chop the head off a chicken. Lucy’s therapist drops in for a visit and observing how tense she is, gravely suggests that she’s at risk of a relapse. Then one murder occurs, followed by a second, and evidence points to Lucy.

After the headlong pace and gruesome CGI of modern slasher movies, even older viewers are likely to find “Strait-Jacket” quaint at best. A similar production today would probably wind up as a made-for-cable, “my mom is a murderer” melodrama on the Lifetime Movie Network. The film’s pacing is deliberate, and the carnage is low-tech and mostly implied, despite the old lobby poster’s promise in grand William Castle style that “Strait-Jacket vividly depicts ax murders!” Although the restrictions on movie violence had relaxed a little by 1964, and a melodrama filmed in black-and-white like “Strait-Jacket” might tease the MPAA standards on mayhem with slightly more success than one photographed in color, studios were still careful not to push their luck too far. Of the three ax attacks in the film, only one explicitly shows grievous bodily harm. Even so, with quick editing and minimal gore, the effect is more impressionistic than realistic. These days, grislier special effects routinely appear on prime-time TV crime shows.

EVE GOLDBERG presents an in-depth examination of the only film Marlon Brando ever directed: "One-Eyed Jacks" (1961)

"ONE-EYED JACKS: AMERICA AT THE CROSSROADS"

A new movie schedule arrived every few months. A two-sided paper treasure chest brimming over with promises of time travel, existential wisdom, and singing in the rain. Wild Strawberries, City Lights, Battle of Algiers, Belle de Jour.

We grabbed up the schedule and studied it with care, taped it to the refrigerator door, marked our calendars. The African Queen, Yojimbo, Rules of the Game.

We made cinema voyages all over town — to the Vista in Hollywood, the Nuart in West LA, the art deco Fox Venice. Before VCRs, DVDs or streaming, revival movie theaters were about the only place a film junkie could get a fix. We might find an occasional nugget on late night TV, John Ford’s Stagecoach, perhaps, or Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but for the most part, it was the revival house or nowhere. Citizen Kane, La Dolce Vita, Alphaville.

There was rumor of a weird Western called One-Eyed Jacks, starring and directed by Marlon Brando. Nobody we knew had seen it. The movie took on the aura of myth. Was there really a scene where Brando gets whipped? What had the famously iconoclastic actor done with the time-worn clichés of the horse opera?

Finally, I think it was 1974, One-Eyed Jacks arrived. We trooped down to the Fox Venice, waited in a long line, found seats in the filled-to-capacity theatre, and settled in for the ride. We were not disappointed. From the opening shot — Brando casually eating a banana during a bank robbery — the film was like no Western we had ever seen. Moody, psychological, ambiguous, it was awash in sadomasochism, with a brooding Brando in nearly every scene. And yes, the actor gets his whipping in a scene of perverse cruelty which sears into memory.

Back in 1974, we knew we had seen an odd, strangely subversive, one-of-a-kind film. We didn’t know, however, that this quirky little revenge gem would someday be considered an important (if flawed) masterpiece of cinema, and a fascinating link between two eras in Hollywood…and America.

The Western is a quintessentially American film genre. From its earliest days, the cowboy drama was about good guys (white lawmen) confronting bad (Indians, outlaws). Each movie was a tale of expansionist dreams and masculine aggression. Each was a saga of civilization triumphing over savagery. The Western was, to quote film critic J. Hoberman, “the way America used to explain itself to itself.”

Edwin Porter’s 1903 film, The Great Train Robbery, was one of the first Westerns. This 12-minute story in which bandits rob a train, only to be pursued by a posse of lawmen, revolutionized the art of cinema. Porter used ground-breaking techniques such as cross-cutting and close-ups to create a suspenseful, compelling narrative. The basic elements of the genre were set.

The Western remains instantly recognizable across more than a century of evolving media and myth-making. Gunfights, holdups, and massacres. Horses, trains, rustlers, and barroom brawls. School-teachers, stampedes, and six-shooters.

The Golden Age of the Western is often considered to be the years 1946-1973. Following World War II, with the Cold War blazing hot on the beaches of Korea, the U.S. declared itself the new global sheriff in town. At home, the Eisenhower Era earned a reputation as being a time of complacency and consumerism. But these were also the McCarthy years, when right-wing witch hunts against political progressives were ruining lives and careers. And, at the same time, the seeds of change were taking root. A young civil rights movement began asking America: What the hell are the good guys who fought Hitler doing about racial discrimination and bigotry at home?

BY JOHN M. WHALEN

“When you go down in deep water, you’re scared. You don’t know how scared you can be. Soon, you forget. But the reef never forgets. It just waits.”—Gilbert Roland as Mike Petrakis.

“Beneath the 12-Mile Reef,” released in a limited edition (3,000 copies) Blu-ray by Twilight Time, is either the second or third movie ever made in Cinemascope. “The Robe” was the first, and “How to Marry a Millionaire” was in production at the same time as “Reef” so there’s some dispute about the release chronology. Basically “Beneath the 12-Mile Reef” is Romeo and Juliet set in the sponge-diving world around Tarpon Springs, Fla. with a young Robert Wagner and Terry Moore as the “sponge-crossed” couple. Wagner plays Tony Petrakis, son of Mike (Gilbert Roland), one of the best Greek sponge divers in the business. Moore plays Gwyneth Rhys, daughter of Thomas Rhys (Richard Boone) the leader of the Conches, the Anglo “hook boat” sponge fishermen. According to the script by A.I. Bezzerides, there’s no love lost between the two factions. Greeks stay out in the deep water, the Conches fish in the shallow waters of the Everglades.

Times are tough for the Greeks, however. The sponges are disappearing. And Mike owes money to a loan shark who threatens to take his boat. Mike and his family have two choices. They can go out to the 12-Mile Reef where Mike already lost one of his sons or they can try moving into the Everglades— Conch territory. They try the Everglades and do okay until Conch Arnold Dix (Peter Graves) shows up with some buddies, threatens to cut Mike’s air hose and grabs their sponge haul. When Mike gets back to Tarpon Springs he looks the Conches up at their favorite watering haul to settle the score. There Mike meets Rhys and Dix but violence is prevented when cops show up. Meanwhile, young Tony and Gwyneth catch love at first sight and run off together while the grownups are arguing. Wagner, complete with hair dyed black and permed to make him look Greek, plays Tony as the young stud trying to get out from under the shadow of his macho father, who calls him “Little Tony.” Moore plays a goofy girl gaga over handsome Tony, even though Dix thinks he’s her boyfriend.

“Beyond the 12-Mile Reef” has plenty of plot complications, which only get worse when Mike decides his only recourse is to dive the 12-Mile Reef. On the way out to the reef, Roland, in one of his best performances as a tough but tender-hearted macho man, gives the speech quoted above, telling Tony he can’t let him dive because it’s too dangerous.

I don’t want to give too much more of the plot away. It’s a very simple story with very broad characters, and admittedly has a totally unbelievable ending. I’ve read a lot of nasty reviews of the film that dismiss it as shallow melodrama with some critics, even faulting screenwriter Bezzerides for inventing the sociological issues posed by the conflict between the Greeks and the Conches. But who cares about that?

“Beneath the 12-Mile Reef” on Blu-ray is an exceptionally entertaining movie for several reasons. First is the on-location Cinemascope photography shot around Tarpon Springs and Key West by Edward Cronjager. Director Robert D. Webb uses Cronjager’s camera to capture a lot of the local color and some of the culture of the Greek divers. I’ve been to Tarpon Springs and it doesn’t look much different today. The underwater scenes are spectacular. Second is a near-perfect music score by the inestimable Bernard Herrmann. Bernie outdoes himself with this soundtrack, providing a truly sensory experience that makes you feel your down in the water with the divers. Third, is the presence of two great actors in the cast. Roland and Boone provide the anchor for this film, giving it a weight its two fledgling co-stars simply didn’t have. Enough cannot be said about Roland, who never fails to give his characters a sense of “stature” as he so eloquently put it in “The Lady and the Bullfighter.” Boone as Rhys has the authority needed to play a man who all the Conches look up to.

BY HANK REINEKE

The Premature Burial (1962) is the third of Roger Corman’s eight film cycle of Technicolor extravaganzas loosely based on the writings of the legendary masters of literary mysteries Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. Corman had previously successfully partnered with Samuel J. Arkoff and James Nicholson of American International Pictures, the trio having mutually enjoyed a tidy profit on their relatively modest investment on two earlier Poe efforts, Fall of the House of Usher (1960) and The Pit and the Pendulum (1961). Corman and the producers would eventually come to loggerheads regarding a fair and equitable split of the The Pit and the Pendulum box-office receipts – a not unforeseeable dispute as Arkoff, Nicholson and Corman were all notorious for their penny-pinching proclivities. In Corman’s recollection both Usher and Pendulum brought in nearly two million each in rentals on a “negative cost of some $200,000.” Corman was rankled by AIP’s tough contract clauses so, as a true independent filmmaker, decided to finance his third Poe adaptation through Pathé Lab who, in Corman’s own words, had “helped back some AIP productions and did their print work.”

This time around Hollywood’s most industrious maverick would lose his gambit. Upon learning of Corman’s brash decision to leave the fold, AIP chose to leverage some economic muscle. They contacted Pathé and threatened to pull all of the company’s subsequent lab work from them should the deal with Corman proceed. Arkoff and Nicholson then brazenly and effectively bought out Pathé’s interest in Corman’s new project, this time a liberal retelling of Poe’s short story of 1844, The Premature Burial.

The Premature Burial is a visually stunning film and a worthy successor to Corman’s two earlier efforts. There’s absolutely no reason why it wouldn’t be as all three films share several key behind-the-camera talents. The most notable returnee is Director of Photography Floyd Crosby, on hand for his third atmospheric rendering of a Poe film. This time around he works in perfect tandem with the Goth styling’s of set designer/art director Daniel Haller. There are also some fresh faces on set as well. Film editor Ronald Sinclair took the cutting reins from Anthony Carras on Poe film no. 3, with the lush orchestrations of Ronald Stein replacing the more avant-garde and jazzy styling of Les Baxter. Corman’s assistant director on this new project was a young and ambitious transplant from the east coast, Francis Ford Coppola.

The single most crucial element missing from The Premature Burial is, of course, the most obvious: Vincent Price. Stories vary on Price’s non-participation in the project. Corman recollects that, upon learning he was about to go rogue, “AIP, aware of my intentions, locked Vincent into an exclusive contract.” Other film historians discount this, noting that Price’s three film contract with AIP had already ended with The Pit and the Pendulum. Price and his wife took off for Europe in the spring of 1961 where he was to appear in two Italian peplums – a genre all the rage in 1961. Though Milland turns in a worthy, professional performance as the emotionally wrought and self-haunted Guy Carrell in The Premature Burial, he wasn’t able to capture the elegant, self-tortured mania that Vincent Price easily brought to similar roles. When The Premature Burial brought in only half the rentals following its release in the spring of 1962 – this extreme financial fall-off despite having enjoyed the same budget as the two earlier Poe adaptations - AIP wisely chose to bring Price back into the fold. The independent Price was happy to return as he was offered a long-term, non-exclusive contract by AIP, thereby allowing him to keep his options open.

BY HANK REINEKE

Blue Underground’s double-feature Blu Ray issue of Code 7… Victim 5 and Mozambique is a generous release considering the company chose to simultaneously issue both films as standalone DVDs. Both films are among the earliest big screen efforts of notorious exploitation producer Harry Alan Towers. Both were adapted from Tower’s own semi-original scenarios (under his usual pseudonym of “Peter Welbeck”) and both were penned by the Australian screenwriter Peter Yeldham with British director Robert Lynn at the helm.

Both men had been working in television and, like Towers, were now gingerly testing the waters of the international movie business. The films, modest thrillers financed by Tower’s UK Company “Towers of London,” nonetheless share a continental roster of technicians and actors. The films are serviceably entertaining as thrillers, but are most ambitious in conveying a jet-setting ‘60s ambiance. The fact that Towers brought his international crew to southern Africa to film is the most notable feature of both efforts.

“Africa is changing,” the ruthless drug smuggler Da Silva sighs to a shady Arabian client in Mozambique (1964). “The best days are gone.” Indeed they were… or soon would be. Just as location shooting was being completed on this fictional thriller set in the tiny, East African province of Mozambique, a coalition of real-life indigenous anti-colonialists and communist guerilla fighters were combining to upset centuries-long Portuguese rule. As a decade-long bloody civil war would soon follow in the wake of the filming of this Technicolor/Technoscope drama, it’s unlikely that any subsequent team of filmmakers from British or continental Europe would be warmly welcomed in the years going forward.

The South African locations of this disc’s companion film Code 7… Victim 5 are cosmopolitan and glittering in presentation; conversely the photography of the plaintive Mozambique countryside captures a far more sober and undeveloped region. Aside from breathless images capturing beautiful oceanside views - sightlines unblemished by tourist constructions - the countryside of Mozambique circa 1963 is revealed as poor and agricultural.

The two films offered on this disc do share similarities aside from their exotic African settings. Not the least of these is that both films open with very public assassinations of characters mostly tangential to the film’s plotlines. Code 7 opens with the daylight murder – by a team of menacing clown-faced assassins – during Capetown’s New Year’s Eve Carnival parade. Mozambique opens similarly with a mysterious assassination atop the winding, ancient stone stairwells of old Lisbon.

In Mozambique, American actor Steve Cochran plays Brad Webster, a down-on-his-luck Cessna pilot. We first encounter Webster as he trawls about Lisbon’s bleak waterfront in search of employment. His blacklisting as a pilot-for-hire is understandable as his previous assignment didn’t go all that well. Both of his passengers were killed in a crash of his piloted small craft, leaving Webster the lone survivor.

For better or worse, his fortunes change following a desperate, alcohol fueled fight in a waterfront saloon. Faced with a probable sixty day jail sentence for vagrancy and public fisticuffs, Lisbon authorities mysteriously offer Webster an alternative. A certain Colonel Valdez residing in Mozambique is looking to hire a small-craft pilot on the down low. The police offer Webster one-way airfare from Lisbon to their colonial territory should he choose to accept the deal.

He does. Once aboard his Lufthansa flight to Mozambique, the sweating heavily, PTSD-afflicted Webster meets the comely blond Christina (Vivi Bach). Christina too, coincidentally, was also sent a one-way ticket at the behest of the mysterious Colonel Valdez. So begins an improbable romance between this middle-aged and craggy American and a beautiful young woman in her twenties. In truth, actor Cochran is perhaps a bit too long-in-the-tooth to pull off this charade as a dashing hero and paramour.

BY FRED BLOSSER

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

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

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

BY JOHN M. WHALEN

The stars must have formed a fortuitous alignment. Somehow, a great wrong has been righted and order has been restored to the universe. Kino Lorber, under its KL Classics brand, has just released “Sunset in the West,” the first-ever high definition Blu-Ray edition of a Roy Rogers Trucolor western. This may not sound like a big deal to some people, but for the initiated—those who grew up watching Roy on the big screen at countless Saturday matinees in the 1950s— it is monumental. Because, until now the only Roy Rogers movies available for home viewing were dark, faded, and badly edited transfers released first on VHS and later DVD by Republic Studios. Republic treated Roy’s movies with criminal disrespect. The studio let the movies fade away with in their vaults, and then sold them to TV where they were butchered to fit time slots. By the time they got to home video there were a mess. For Roy’s fans, it seemed a hopeless situation that would never be corrected. But now, thanks to a first class restoration by Kino Lorber, you can see what John McClane was talking about in “Die Hard,” when he told Hans he was kinda partial to Roy Rogers more than John Wayne, because: “I really like those shirts.”

Color was an essential component of the Rogers westerns. In addition to the western-style shirts he wore, there was the bandana around his neck, the silver studs on his holster and gun belt, the hand-tooled boots with touches of turquoise on them, all of which combined to make Roy practically a living work of art. Even Trigger, his golden Palomino, billed as “The Smartest Horse in the Movies” was outfitted with handsomely a burnished leather saddle festooned with silver doo-dads and a Mexican-style saddle blanket. But you could hardly see any of that on home video. Part of the problem was the Trucolor process itself. Republic invented its own cheaper red and green two-strip color process to save money and still compete with Technicolor. The absence of the third blue strip resulted in more pastel shades than Technicolor with the picture emphasizing oranges and blues. The result was a special look that was immediately identifiable, and put Republic’s, and especially Roy Rogers, movies sort of in a class by themselves. But the big drawback was that Trucolor film faded quickly. Kino Lorber has done a praiseworthy restoration, remastering “Sunset in the West,” from a 4K scan, and the movie looks just about as good as it must have when it was first released. It’s a significant event in the history of film restoration.

“Sunset in the West” is a typical Roy Rogers movie. Certainly not the best he ever made, but a good one.
I would vote for “Bells of San Angelo” as the best, but I suppose it’s all a matter of opinion. When you’re talking about the King of the Cowboys what can you say? They’re all great. In this one Roy finds himself involved in a plot involving gun runners. The script by screenwriting veteran Gerald Geraghty starts with a train hijacking. (That’s another plus right there. Roy Rogers and trains! There are several steam locomotives in the story, although it’s likely there was only one that was used and made over to look different each time.) The bad guys drive the trains to isolated areas, dump out the freight, and replace it with guns to be smuggled across the border to a foreign power. The trains are found later wrecked somewhere along the track. Roy finds out about it when the train he was expecting to pick up the cattle he had driven to Bordertown races right on by without even stopping. Not a man to let a thing like that go by, Roy jumps on Trigger and races after the steaming locomotive. He overtakes the train, jumps aboard and is immediately punched out by the engineer and knocked off the speeding locomotive.

And that’s just the first reel of this action-packed movie. Directed at a frenetic pace by the legendary William Witney (one of Quentin Tarantino’s favorite directors), “Sunset in the West” packs a slew of galloping horse chases (Roy takes down two baddies riding double in one scene), numerous fist fights (including a barroom brawl that must have used half of Republics fabled team of stunt men), several gun fights, four or five quick musical numbers, and a finale that takes place along the crashing waves of a deserted beach. And all packed into a dizzying 67 minutes.

The cast includes Penny Edwards, playing the niece of Sheriff Tad Osborne (Will Wright), an old timer who’s about to chuck his 30-year career because he can’t solve the mystery of the highjacked trains. The plot gets moving when Roy, is deputized and helps find out who’s behind it all. Also on hand for comedy relief is Gordon Jones as “Splinters” a hiccupping barber/deputy sheriff. Pierre Watkin appears as Gordon McKnight, a leading citizen of Bordertown who seems kind of shady, and Estelita Rodrigues, who plays Carmelita a Mexican gal singer who doubles as a spy for Deputy Splinters. Foy Willing and the Sons of the Purple Sage are on hand to provide some of the music.

Kino Lorber presents the movie in a 1920X1080p transfer and in its original aspect ratio of 1.37:1, slightly wider than the standard 1.33:1. Bonus features include audio commentary by Western film historian Toby Roan, who provides interesting info on the cast, the locations, and, just about anything else you’d want to know about the movie. There are also previews of other westerns in the KL catalog. There’s no question. This is one Blu-Ray you have to own. Let’s hope there are more restorations of these classic films to come. Until then, Happy Trails, partner, and may the Good Lord take a liking to you.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON

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

Tim Sarnoff Technicolor's President of Production, addresses attendees.

By Mark Cerulli

The energy was building, the drones were flying and the mood was celebratory as Technicolor officially opened its brand-new Culver City TEC Center dedicated to the brave new worlds of VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality) and other immersive media platforms.

The official name is “Technicolor Experience Center”, and it’s been having a “soft” opening for almost a year, but now the doors are really open... The facility is a collaborative lab and incubator to develop future content and delivery platforms in the Immersive media space. “The TEC is really a work in progress,” explains Marcie Jastrow, Technicolor’s SVP Immersive Media and the executive in charge of the Center. “It’s a safe place for people to come and learn. It’s part education, part production and part post-production.” Although Technicolor is the parent company of hot VFX shops The Mill, MPC and Mr. X, which combined work on fully 80% of Hollywood blockbusters and 50% of Super Bowl spots, the TEC is agnostic – meaning they welcome all producers and projects.

Mention “Technicolor” and most people think old time movie color, but as Tim Sarnoff, Technicolor’s President of Production points out, “We processed our last foot of film in 2015, we’ve been growing in the digital space for years.” Technicolor owns over 40,000 patents and is ubiquitous today. “Everyone touches something that involves Technicolor,” says Sarnoff, “… from your smartphone, TV, set-top boxes, blockbuster movies to Super Bowl commercials.”

One cool item on display was “The Blackbird” a VR vehicle designed by The Mill that has been transforming auto advertising because it can mimic almost any type of car and its unique 3D camera rig can capture a virtual version of any environment. Along with making auto ad shoots easier, The Blackbird (named because it was built in the very same hangar where the legendary spy plane, SR-71, was constructed) can also help automotive designers envision a new vehicle much earlier in the design process.

Over 400 people crowded Technicolor’s new space – designers, directors, executives from gaming, TV, film studios and technologists, all curious about the night’s other big announcement: Technicolor and HP’s new collaboration: MARS Home Planet, an ambitious project to use VR to design a life-sustaining environment for 1 million humans on the Martian surface. Hopefully we don’t have to flee Mother Earth just yet (!) but this will be a vast experiment where students and members of the public worldwide are invited to participate.

Blackbird VR vehicle.

“We wanted to tap into the collective human imagination and inspiration to reinvent life on another planet…” enthuses Sean Young, HP’s Worldwide Segment Manager, Product Development. He also pointed out that while HP is known for its printers, they’ve been working in the film and media space for 75 years, starting with building a color grader for Walt Disney’s Fantasia.

MARS Home Planet uses NASA’s research and footage of the Martian surface to create a realistic backdrop for engineers, creatives, scientists and others to reimagine what human life on another planet could be. Wanna be an astronaut? Go to hp.com/go/mars. The first 10,000 explorers get a download code for the Fusion Mars 2030 VR Experience.

BY HANK REINEKE

There’s enough cross-plot evidence to suggest that some ideas woven into World Without End (Allied Artists, 1956) were based in part on H.G. Wells’ classic 1895 novel The Time Machine. Wells’ immortal tale would, of course, soon follow the less-celebrated World Without End as a lavish, big-screen Hollywood feature of 1960. Though director-writer Edward Bernds readily admitted to familiarity with Wells’ The Time Machine, he insisted his screenplay was a wholly original creation. Though the similarities between the two works cannot be discounted, Bernds refutation has merit. Certainly modern science-fiction’s fascinations with time and space travel were hardly of the abstract, and most certainly predated Wells’ own literary musings on the subject.

That said, Bernds World Without End is of its own time and primarily a stereotypical 1950s Cold War-era vehicle. It’s a call for a return to reason and détente in the decade following the game-changing horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The real monsters in this film are neither the over-sized arachnids nor the ambling Cyclops-Neanderthals. Instead it’s the hawkish politicians, generals, diplomats and scientists who recklessly helped dress the stage for earth’s inevitable apocalypse. There’s little denying this is a “message” film. Even before the credits roll, the film opens dramatically with a grim, red-tinted vision of an atomic mushroom cloud spiraling heavenward.

It is March of 1957, and the U.S. has sent a spacecraft on mankind’s first ever flight to red planet Mars. Surprisingly, the four man crew is not scheduled to touch down on the Martian surface; this flight is purely a reconnaissance mission in which they are tasked to twice orbit Mars for photo-mapping. In Washington D.C., Pentagon officials, members of the press, and distraught family members have become increasingly anxious as contact with the spaceship has been lost. The astronauts onboard are less concerned. They realize this breakdown in communication is merely temporary, likely the result of their spacecraft entering Mars’ magnetic field.

Unfortunately and unbeknownst to the crew, on the return voyage home, the spaceship accidentally wanders into a time displacement vortex. The craft crashes into a snowy region that the rattled astronauts – all of whom have miraculously survived – not unreasonably assume is one of Mars’ famed polar icecaps. It’s not, as they soon recognize when exiting the craft without the assistance of oxygen helmets or pressure suits. Journeying from the snow-capped mountain, they dimly recognize the outline of the Rockies, believing they might have somehow landed on the border of Idaho and Wyoming, or perhaps that of Colorado and New Mexico.

They quickly begin to have their doubts when they wander into a cave and are attacked by giant spiders “as big as dogs!” Surviving that sticky encounter with the assistance of their pistols, an overnight campout under the stars is summarily ruined when they’re viciously attacked by – and barely stave off - a gang of marauding Cyclops-Neanderthals who brandish primitive hand weapons. Taking supposed safe harbor in still another cave, the crew is trapped inside when a steel panel mysteriously descends from above. Their abductors are, to the great relief of all, friends.

They learn from a panel of paternal, subterranean elders referred as “The Council,” that they are indeed back on earth. But it’s now the year 2508, some 551 years since they had first been launched into orbit. They also learn that the earth was almost entirely destroyed in the “Great Blow” of 2188. This was the year of Armageddon when “man destroyed himself” through foolish use of atomic weaponry and the absence of wisdom.

Cinema Retro has received the following press release:

CELEBRATE THE LIFE OF SIR ROGER MOORE WITH

TWO JAMES BOND CLASSICS, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME AND FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, 

AS THEY RETURN TO CINEMAS WORLDWIDE 

WITH PROCEEDS TO BENEFIT UNICEF

London, UK – May 26, 2017 – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios (MGM), Park Circus and EON Productions are pleased to announce a series of special screenings in memory of Sir Roger Moore, to take place at cinemas across the world including: Odeon Cinemas (UK), AMC Theatres (U.S.) and Hoyts (Australia), beginning 31 May 2017. Additional locations to be announced soon.

The newly restored 4K versions of The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only will be screened with 50 percent of all  proceeds benefitting UNICEF. As a Goodwill Ambassador, Sir Roger had been a dedicated and passionate supporter of UNICEF since 1991.

Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli of EON Productions, long-standing producers of the James Bond films said “In honour of Sir Roger Moore, we are delighted these Bond screenings will benefit UNICEF which was the charity closest to his heart.”

Gary Barber, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, MGM added “Sir Roger Moore left an indelible imprint on audiences worldwide. There is no better way to remember Roger’s legacy than bringing back his iconic performances as James Bond to cinemas across the world while aiding UNICEF, the charity he steadfastly supported.” 

Nick Varley, CEO of distributor Park Circus said “Park Circus is extremely privileged to be MGM’s library distributor and we are delighted to have the chance to celebrate the life and work of Sir Roger Moore through these screenings, and most particularly as it benefits UNICEF, an organization very close to Sir Roger.”

We would also like to thank Deluxe Technicolor Digital Cinema for kindly facilitating the delivery of this project to cinemas for us.

Details of screenings can be found at www.parkcircus.com and at participating cinemas websites.

“GREETINGS AND FARTS”

By Raymond Benson

Master filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu’s late-period picture, Good Morning (Ohayō), is a curious, but amusing, slice-of-life portrait of a suburban neighborhood in contemporary (circa 1959) Japan. Ozu, mostly known for the gendai-geki film genre, i.e., modern dramas about family life and social conditions, also made a few comedies. He was a genius at depicting relationships between parents and children (Tokyo Story, 1953, is arguably his most admirable work), and Good Morning presents something of a parable about how a couple of young schoolboys influence an entire community of suspicious and gossipy housewives and lackadaisical “salary men” husbands.

A Western audience will deem the comedy subtle; cultural differences between East and West, especially when it comes to bathroom humor, decidedly determine how funny someone will think Good Morning really is. There are a lot of fart jokes in the film. In fact, Ozu uses farting as a way that characters communicate, especially the children. The schoolboys assign status to how easily one can blow wind by pushing an imaginary button on a forehead. Inability to produce a toot results in minor ostracization. It must be said that the children’s farts don’t sound like the real thing—they are high-pitched and somewhat musical in tone.

The adults, on the other hand, produce lower-toned flatulence that is more realistic. In their case, the noises are often confused with real words. In one scene, a man is dressing for the day and pleasantly lets two or three bursts fly. Each time, his wife enters from the other room and asks, “Did you call?” He shakes his head no, and she leaves. It happens again and she returns. “Did you say something?”

The story, such as it is, concerns two brothers—probably about nine and six years of age—who decide to go on a speaking strike until their parents buy a new television set (all the rage, apparently, in those days). The boys are also rebelling against the grown-ups’ use of meaningless greetings to fill up air space—“Good morning,” “How are you,” “I’m fine,” “Nice day,” etc.

At the same time, the adult women in the block gossip and imagine faults in their neighbors, all based on misunderstandings and a lack of real communication—which is what Ozu’s film is really about. He seems to be saying that in order for everyone to get along in a modern society, we need to say what’s truthfully on our minds.

Shot in gorgeous Technicolor, Good Morning differs from Ozu’s more solemn works that have a restrained editorial pace and meditational camera work. This one is lively, is accompanied by a “funny” musical score, and features many scenes outdoors. The cast is fine, especially the two boys (played by Shitara Koji and Masahiko Shimazu).

The Criterion Collection’s new Blu-ray features a 4K digital restoration (upgraded from the label’s previous DVD release) and an uncompressed monaural soundtrack. It looks terrific.

Perhaps more significant, though, is that Criterion has chosen to include as a supplement Ozu’s acclaimed silent film from 1932, I Was Born, But… Sound films came late to Japan because of the benshi—narrators who performed during screenings of silent pictures, commenting on the film’s narrative. They had a powerful hold on the industry. Criterion had previously released this title as part of an Eclipse box set of early Ozu titles, but here they’ve upgraded the movie as a Blu-ray. Also a comedy, Born deals with similar social mores. In this case, the boys influence how their father deals with his boss, and also how they relate to their school mate, the boss’ son. For my money, despite being a silent picture, I Was Born, But… is better than Good Morning!

Other supplements include a portion of a “lost” Ozu silent short from 1929, A Straightforward Boy; a new interview with film scholar David Bordwell about the films; and a fascinating video essay on Ozu’s use of humor by critic David Cairns. Jonathan Rosenbaum’s essay adorns the inner booklet.

Good Morning is a worthwhile release from Criterion, especially for aficionados of Japanese cinema. One viewing, and your perception of farting will be changed forever.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON

BY FRED BLOSSER

The late Sergio Corbucci (1926-1990) had a long, prolific career in the Italian film industry as a screenwriter and director, but little exposure in U.S. theaters by comparison with his total output. IMDB credits him with sixty-three titles as director. By my count, eleven arrived on Stateside screens, none of them earning Corbucci any real notice at the time. All were genre films -- first sword-and-sandal movies, then Westerns -- before it was cool for critics to treat such products seriously, especially dubbed imports. Three toga-and beefcake pictures -- “Goliath and the Vampires” (1961), “Duel of the Titans” (1961), and “The Slave” (1962) -- were released on drive-in and double-feature bills in the Hercules era. “Minnesota Clay” (1964) had a 1966 run disguised as an American B-Western. “Navajo Joe” (1966) passed through theaters in 1967, earning a typically dismissive review from Bosley Crowther in the New York Times (“results aren’t worth a Mexican peso”). You had to use a magnifying glass to see Corbucci’s name on the movie poster. In his 1994 autobiography, Burt Reynolds said he only took the offer to star in the picture because he thought the director would be the other Sergio . . . Leone. “The Hellbenders” (1967) came and went, also camouflaged as an American production and promoting Joseph Cotten’s starring role. Cotten was a fine actor but hardly big box-office in ’67.

“The Mercenary” (1968) enjoyed a higher profile in a 1970 release, but “Alberto Grimaldi Presents . . .” dominated the credits, including the cover blurb on a paperback novelization that touted the movie as “the bloodiest ‘Italian’ Western of them all . . . by the producer of ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.’ ” “Companeros” (1970) didn’t open in the U.S. until 1972, and then only with limited distribution. “Sonny and Jed” (1972) followed in 1974. Neither made much of an impression as the Spaghetti cycle waned here. “Shoot First, Ask Questions Later” (1975), a sad attempt at comedy in the Spaghetti twilight, loped through rural drive-ins. “Super Fuzz” (1980; U.S. distribution, 1982) was a Terence Hill police comedy that the Times’ Herbert Mitgang said had “one funny gag a few minutes before the end.” At least Mitgang noted Corbucci and Hill by name as “longtime makers of spaghetti westerns.”

If you were nostalgic for Italian Westerns in the late ‘70s and ‘80s, after the cycle had come and gone in the States, you could read about Corbucci in Laurence Staig and Tony Williams’ “Italian Western: The Opera of Violence” (1975) and Christopher Frayling’s “Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone” (1981). There you would learn that one of Corbucci’s Westerns that never made it to the States, “Django” (1966), was as wildly popular and influential overseas as Sergio Leone’s movies. But good luck in ever seeing it or Corbucci’s other Westerns, unless you might catch “The Hellbenders” in a pan-and-scan, commercial-infested print on local TV.

Thanks to the advent of home video, cable, and streaming internet -- and in particular, DVD and Blu-ray in which his films can be seen in the proper aspect ratio and definition -- both the committed and the curious now have access to virtually all of Corbucci’s thirteen Westerns, even the obscure “Grand Canyon Massacre” (1964), his first powder-burner, co-directed with Albert Band. Is Quentin Tarantino justified in praising Corbucci as “one of the great Western directors of all time”? Today, you don’t have to take Tarantino’s word for it, or not; you can judge for yourself.

By most accounts, a Corbucci Top Five would include “Django,” The Great Silence,” “The Mercenary,” “Companeros,” and “The Specialist” (1969). The first four are all in relatively easy reach in various formats and platforms. “Django,” “The Great Silence,” and “Companeros” have had domestic DVD releases. “The Mercenary” hasn’t, but it shows up periodically on cable channels, albeit in an edited version, and you can find good DVD and Blu-ray editions with an English voice track through Amazon and import dealers on the web.

“The Specialist” remains more elusive. Written and directed by Corbucci during his peak period, originally titled “Gli specialisti” and also known as “Specialists” and “Drop Them or I’ll Shoot,” this Western never played in U.S. theaters, has never had an American video release, and is hard to find even on the collectors‘ market in a print with an English-language option. Not to be confused with other, unrelated films of the same name, including a mediocre 1994 Sylvester Stallone crime drama and an obscure 1975 B-movie with Adam West, it is past due for official U.S. release on DVD. Or, better yet, on hi-def Blu-ray to give Corbucci’s compositions and Dario Di Palma’s rich Techniscope and Technicolor cinematography their due sharpness and color on home screens.

BY MARK CERULLI 

Even among discriminating CR readers, there is NO doubt that Alien, Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi masterpiece is truly terrifying. Jump forward to 2017: technology is light years ahead and the world is counting down towards Scott’s latest directing effort, Alien: Covenant. One of the many new technologies to emerge in the 38 years since the franchise chest-burst onto the scene is Virtual Reality. VR vastly expands the experience of a visual work by immersing the viewer in it. Like feature films a century ago, VR content is starting out as short films, being consumed by a growing audience. Kudos to Twentieth Century Fox and RSA for giving their iconic franchise the VR treatment with Alien: Covenant In Utero, A Virtual Reality Experience. The two-minute feature was unveiled at a special event held at Technicolor’s Experience Center, the company’s VR incubator in Culver City.

Who can forget John Hurt curiously peering into the strange pod and getting attacked by a face-hugger in the original Alien? Now you can be inside one of those very pods. “Consumers are being part of the story, not just watching the story,” says Matthais Wittmann, VFX Supervisor for MPC, the Technicolor company that worked on the project with Ridley Scott Associates, Twentieth Century Fox and a host of other partners.

“Our goal was to scare you,” said Ted Schilowitz, Futurist at 20^th Century Fox. Mission accomplished: The In Utero experience immerses the viewer inside the birthing pod, complete with sights (like blood or whatever alien fluids transverse the veins) and sounds (heartbeats, a screaming victim outside the pod) as the Alien Neomorph finishes developing and bursts out, fully lethal, towards its next victim.

“We hit the ground running,” says the project’s director, David Karlak, who rode the buzz from his brilliant futuristic short Rise straight into Ridley Scott’s office. “It’s an example of how you take all the different disciplines that make films look as good as they do today and recalibrating them to deliver a VR experience that is unparalleled,” the director adds. Obviously any young filmmaker would jump at the chance to work with a legend like Ridley Scott, but for Karlak, the project’s unique universe also had its attractions: “For me the inspiration was the concept… since this was told from the point of view of a Neomorph, how would a creature that’s designed to hunt perceive the world?” Well, like the old saying goes, if all you have is a hammer, pretty soon everything starts to look like a nail.

Director David Karlak

Jen Dennis, RSA’s Executive Producer of Branded Content & VR watched how her boss immediately took to VR when a similar project was created for his 2015 hit, The Martian. “It’s very important to Ridley that these pieces have a real filmic essence to them, they have to feel ‘filmic.’” In a nod to Karlak’s talent she said, “When we saw Rise, we knew he was the right person for this.”

Achieving the proper 360° look fell to Technicolor’s MPC VFX Supervisor, Matthais Wittmann who had his hands full from the very first frame: “You need a really high frame rate or you get sick,” he pointed out. Since there are no cuts in VR, “You can’t save yourself with edits.”

The fact that MPC was also handling visual effects for Alien: Covenant was a huge plus. “We knew very early on that there would be a VR component so our crew went over to the sets to take photographs so we’d have them…” Wittmann says, adding, “our team was there, they knew about the lighting, they’ve worked on other Alien movies already so all this information we can leverage.” And then, of course, there was The Master: “Since this was a point of view that has never been done before,” Wittmann continues, “it was also very helpful to have Ridley Scott close by so we could ask him, ‘Is that how it would be?’” Director Karlak echoed how invaluable Scott’s guidance was – suggesting he watch videos of baby crocodiles hatching and endoscopic footage of a human womb, just to keep the team on the right track. Now after over five months of intense work, this alien baby has arrived, fangs and all…

Intrepid Cinema Retro scribe Mark Cerulli gets the full "Alien" VR treatment.

Alien: Covenant In Utero, A Virtual Reality Experience, is available on the Oculus platform on “Alien Day”, April 26^th and then on all mobile and tethered platforms like Samsung Gear VR, Google Daydream View, HTC Vice and PlayStation VR starting May 10.

Alien: Covenant arrives in theaters on May 19^th from Twentieth Century Fox.

BY HANK REINEKE

The cognoscenti will have no doubt noted this is the third home video resurrection of writer-director-co-producer Ted Newsom’s Flesh & Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror. Originally issued on VHS in 1999 as part of Anchor Bay’s ambitious and much welcomed “Hammer Collection” series, this affectionate documentary was subsequently ported over to DVD in 2004 by Image Entertainment, Inc. Both of those earlier releases shared a running time of some ninety-nine minutes. This comprehensive new version, curiously issued again on DVD rather than as an upgraded Blu, boasts of a “Digitally Remastered Expanded Director’s Cut.” This newest incarnation, as promised, has been expanded with an additional thirty-seven minutes of material. Whether or not the tighter original cut has been artistically or informatively superseded by this director’s cut is open to argument. While the new version is of more generous length, it must be said the story arc occasionally meanders, unnecessarily bloated by too-familiar footage culled from original trailers.

Regardless, this documentary is an essential item for fans of Hammer, thoughtfully outlining the studio’s metamorphosis from a small film distribution company to a vanguard of the British film industry. In the mid 1930s Hammer’s earliest successes were with such monochrome dramas as Songs of Freedom (with Paul Robeson) and mysteries as The Mystery of the Mary Celeste (with Bela Lugosi). Not surprisingly, it really wasn’t until after the country emerged from the rubble of WWII that the studio would hit a proper stride, adapting such popular British radio shows as Dick Baron: Special Agent as cinematic properties. But it wasn’t until the studio acquired the rights to bring Nigel Kneale’s popular science fiction BBC television series The Quatermass Experiment to the big screen in 1955 that Hammer’s course was set. The success of that film spawned a sequel and a knockoff which would signal what would follow. Beginning with The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), the studio would score with an influential and commercially successful string of science-fiction, fantasy and horror films. These successes cemented the studio’s reputation as Britain’s preeminent fright factory.

In that regard, Hammer had appropriated the mantle previously held by Universal Studios as the foremost purveyor of Gothic horror cinema. Though the studio was barred from utilizing Jack Pierce’s iconic make-up designs - as well as other Universal inventions protected by copyright – such public domain properties as Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein were free for an original and modern updating. If anything, the time was right for the torch of the angry villager to be passed on. Universal had all but abandoned their dependable stable of classic monsters, choosing instead to bring creatures of the atom-age to the screen. As Flesh & Blood astutely notes, Hammer would inadvertently rescue these monsters of folklore from the ignominy of their being mere slapstick foils to Abbott and Costello. With their distinctive trademark mix of splashy Technicolor, tawdry bloodletting, overt sexuality, and a battery of dreamy screen sirens (and unashamed displays of ample cleavage), the studio effectively reenergized interest in gothic-horror cinema.

To be sure, this is not an easy story to tell to satisfaction. Flesh & Blood bravely attempts to thoroughly document the sprawling history and trajectory of Hammer’s hits and misses, offering a score of first-person and genuinely interesting procession of candid talking-head interviews. The studio, as many of this film’s participants take great pains to point out here, was a business first and foremost. The producers were primarily interested in turning a tidy profit on their investment and productions were sometimes hobbled by miserly budgeting. Even in the studio’s halcyon days (1957-1972) most of the studio’s film projects – many pre-sold to distributors on little more than a colorful mock-up of an exploitative film poster – adhered to a tight six week shooting schedule.

As the principal photography of this documentary began as early as 1993, the pool of talent available for interview had not yet been thinned by time and age. In truth, there’s hardly a then-surviving veteran from behind or in front of Hammer’s cameras who isn’t interviewed or referenced in the film. In a particular masterstroke, the producers were able to enlist the studio’s two greatest and most iconic star players, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, to serve as principal narrators of the opus. It’s mostly Lee’s narration that carries the documentary forward, though the wasting, frail voice of a clearly ailing Peter Cushing also bravely serves in this capacity.

Skillfully interweaving interviews, home movies, trailers, vintage newsreels, stock footage, photographs, promotional materials, and elements sourced from television archives, we are introduced to the surviving men and woman who served as the studio’s primary movers and shakers. Those sharing behind-the camera memories are Michael Carreras, Anthony Hinds, Roy Ward Baker, Don Sharp, Freddie Francis, Aida Young, Jimmy Sangster, Richard Matheson, and composer James Bernard amongst others. Among those who appeared on the silver screen and were happy to share their insights and warm recollections are the bosomy starlets who were the epitomes of “Hammer Glamour:” Ingrid Pitt, Martine Beswick, Caroline Munro, Hazel Court, Raquel Welch, and Veronica Carlson.

The NoHo 7, the Playhouse 7, and the Royal in Los Angeles will all be showing a double feature of two of Doris Day’s best-known films on Monday, August 29, 2016.  At 7:00 pm The Man Who Knew Too Much, the classic 1956 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, will be screened as part of its 60^th anniversary. At 4:30 pm and again at 9:30 pm, 1961’s Lover Come Back, directed by Delbert Mann, will be screened as part of its 55^th anniversary.

From the press release:

Doris Day Double Feature

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

Click here to buy tickets to the 4:30PM Lover Come Back (includes admission to the 7PM The Man Who Knew Too Much).

Click here to buy tickets to the 7PM The Man Who Knew Too Much (includes admission to the 9:30PM Lover Come Back).

Laemmle’s Anniversary Classics presents a tribute to Doris Day, one of the last surviving stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Day was the number one female box office star of the 20th century, but she was sometimes underrated as an actress. She excelled in musicals, comedy, and drama and during the 1950s and 60s she was one of the few actresses who regularly played working women. We offer a double feature of two of her most popular films, the 60th anniversary of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) and the 55th anniversary of Lover Come Back (1961). So you won’t miss any of the fun, the Doris Day double bill plays at three locations: the Royal in West L.A., Laemmle NoHo 7, and the Playhouse 7 in Pasadena on Monday, August 29.

We will have trivia contests with prizes at all three locations.

In ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much,’ one of Doris Day’s rare forays into the thriller genre, the actress introduced one of her most successful songs, the Oscar-winning hit, “Que Sera Sera.” But she also demonstrated her versatility in several harrowing and suspenseful dramatic scenes. She plays the wife of one of Hitchcock’s favorite actors, James Stewart. The movie was a box office bonanza for all parties. Hitchcock’s success during the 1940s allowed the director to employ bigger budgets and shoot on location for several of his Technicolor thrillers in the 1950s, including To Catch a Thief, Vertigo, and North by Northwest. For The Man Who Knew Too Much, a remake of his own 1934 film, Hitchcock traveled to Morocco and to London for some spectacular location scenes. In his famous series of interviews with the Master of Suspense, Francois Truffaut wrote, “In the construction as well as in the rigorous attention to detail, the remake is by far superior to the original.” The plot turns on kidnapping and assassination, all building to a concert scene in the Royal Albert Hall that climaxes memorably with the clash of a pair of cymbals.

‘Lover Come Back’ was the second comedy teaming of Doris Day with Rock Hudson, on the heels of their huge 1959 hit, Pillow Talk. Day and Hudson play rival advertising executives who vie for an account that doesn’t exist, dreamed up by Hudson to throw Day off the track, further complicated by their romantic entanglement. Screenwriters Stanley Shapiro (who won an Oscar for ‘Pillow Talk’) and Paul Henning concocted a witty scenario with deft sight gags, targeting the influence of Madison Avenue in the era, and their original screenplay was Oscar-nominated in 1961. Day, Hudson, and a winning supporting cast including Tony Randall, Edie Adams and Jack Kruschen are all at the top of their game, nimbly directed by Delbert Mann. The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther raved about “…this springy and sprightly surprise, which is one of the brightest, most satiric comedies since ‘It Happened One Night.’ The Times also celebrated the box office smash as “the funniest picture of the year.”

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

The name James A. Fitzpatrick might be meaningless to all but film scholars today but decades ago his popular travelogues provided movie-goers valuable glimpses of exotic sights around the globe. Fitzpatrick broke into the movie business in the silent era and occasionally produced feature films but he's primarily known for his hundreds of travel shorts that were screened in movie theaters prior to the main feature. In the era before television, Fitzpatrick's productions represented a rare opportunity for the general public to see actual footage of historic places and different cultures. Best of all, Fitzpatrick had the foresight to film these excursions in Technicolor, a process that ensured that the film stock never faded. Thus, the shorts look as impressive today as they did decades ago. It should be noted that some of these shorts were filmed by cinematographers who would become legendary including Winton C. Hoch and Jack Cardiff. The Warner Archive has released thirty of Fitzpatrick's "Traveltalks" shorts as a three DVD set. The years covered range from 1935 through the mid 1940s. Fitzpatrick himself provided the narration for each film, immodestly billing himself as "The Voice of the Globe". He also employed a full orchestra to enhance the films with lush musical scores and occasionally laughably corny vocal renditions of old standards.  Nevertheless, there is a timeless quality to the facts and sights unveiled in the shorts and modern audiences can still learn much from them. However, there is a far more poignant value to them. Fitzpatrick shot these films when the world was gearing up for the unthinkable: a second world war. Although Fitzpatrick deftly tiptoes between the international tensions (who wants to see a depressing travelogue?), the back story to what he had to ignore is rather fascinating. A 1935 short dedicated to modern Tokyo presents the city as a booming metropolis filled with serene scenes and an innocent population. However, the film was shot when the militaristic government of Japan had already invaded China and was committing genocide and other horrendous atrocities. Other shorts present peaceful scenes of great countires in days prior to the coming war. We see Czechoslovakia and Austria immediately prior to their takeover by Hitler's hordes. The World's Fair Exhibition in Paris is shown as a symbol of international brotherhood and cooperation even as war clouds were building over Europe. Within a year of this film being shot, France and England would be at war with Germany and shortly thereafter, "The City of Light" itself would be occupied by German troops. There is a poignancy in watching the innocent people depicted in these films today and one can't help but wonder just how many of them didn't survive the coming conflict. France alone would lose 250,000 military personnel in the battle against Nazism. Japan would lose hundreds of thousands of civilians before the war ended. On a more cheerful level, the set presents many travelogues of areas not affected by war: the mainland USA and South America, primarily. (Once the war broke out, Fitzpatrick seemed to restrict his films these geographic areas.) A 1935 short about Los Angeles is striking if only because of the lack of congestion and traffic. A short dedicated to southern Florida decades before Disney's influence emphasizes Miami Beach and such quaint sites as the Everglades and Silver Springs.  Those films shot in the USA during the war years only reinforce that America largely escaped the horrors inflicted on other parts of the globe. Although 400,000 American servicemen would die in the conflict, the mainland remained isolated from invasion and day-to-day life largely carried on as normal, as illustrated in these shorts. 

The DVD set is a remarkable time capsule that will appeal to anyone with an interest in history and travel. Well done, Mr. Fitzpatrick.

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UNBRIDLED PASSION by Howard Hughes

Following the release in March of ‘A Man Called Gannon’ (1968), Simply Media in the UK continue to release more Universal-International westerns, this time of 1940s and ‘50s vintage. The new releases, out on 18 April, are ‘Calamity Jane & Sam Bass’ (1949), ‘Cattle Drive’ (1951) and ‘Black Horse Canyon’ (1954). This trio of films are literally ‘Horse Operas’, with the accent on thoroughbred steeds and their importance and role in the working west. Be they cattle drovers, stock breeders or outlaws, where would any of them be without the horse? The answer, of course, is walking.

I’ll review the DVDs in the order I watched them. First up is ‘Cattle Drive’, a 1951 western directed by Kurt Neumann. Chester Graham Jnr (Dean Stockwell), the spoilt, arrogant son of railroad magnet Chester Graham Snr (Leon Ames), is accidentally left behind when the train he is travelling on makes a water stop. Lost in the arid desert, he is rescued by Dan Mathews (Joel McCrea), the ramrod on a cattle drive to Santa Fe. The boy joins the trek, reluctantly at first, and eventually learns to respect his elders, whilst also learning how to become a proficient cowhand and bronc buster. When they arrive at the trail’s end, the boy – who has been christened Chet by the drovers – has become so enamoured of Dan and life on the range that he’s reluctant to re-join his father and civilisation.

As you’d expect from the material, there are similarities here with such films as ‘Red River’ (starring John Wayne and Montgomery Clift) and ‘Cattle Empire’ (also starring Joel McCrea) and the television series that grew out of the latter, ‘Rawhide’, which made a TV star of Clint Eastwood. On the cattle drive, there’s a chuck wagon stocked with vittles driven by an irascible cook (was there any other type on cattle drives?) as played by Chill Wills, as ‘old pot walloper’ Dallas. There’s a sense of the workaday west, with the drovers routine depicted romantically, but also to a degree realistically. The trail drivers diet of beans and more beans will make you think of the famous campfire scene in ‘Blazing Saddles’ (1974). In a rather fanciful moment, a rogue black stallion runs off the remuda, the herd of horses the drovers use as their steeds. But there’s nothing fanciful about the scene where the destructive power of a cattle stampede is depicted, after one drover accidently spooks the steers with a rifle shot.

Unusually for a 1950s western, there’s no female lead – in fact there are no women in ‘Cattle Drive’ at all. McCrea, always a reliable screen cowboy, and young Stockwell (perhaps known to most from the sci-fi TV series ‘Quantum Leap’) make an appealing team. Though Dan is the ramrod, Cap (Howard Petrie) is trail boss. Among the drovers are troublemaker Jim Currie (Henry Brandon – Chief Scar in ‘The Searchers’) and Charlie Morgan aka Careless (B-western star Bob Steele). Other drovers were played by reliable stuntmen Emile Avery, Carol Henry, James Van Horn and Chuck Roberson, who handle the ridin’ and ropin’ with aplomb. The film was shot in spectacular Technicolor on location in Death Valley National Park, California, and also in the distinctive hilly backdrop and red dust of Paria, Utah, which has been used as the memorable setting for such westerns as ‘The Outlaw Josey Wales’, ‘Ride in the Whirlwind’, ‘Sergeants 3’ and ‘Duel at Diablo’. Listen out for the traditional cowboy ballad ‘Ten Thousand Cattle Gone’ at various points in the film, either in orchestrations, or whistled, sung or hummed by the cowhands. This was reputedly one of McCrae’s favourites of his own films and his easy-going, hard-riding Dan is the epitome of a 1950s Hollywood western hero. At one point, Dan races his horse Blaze against Currie’s steed Lightning, but it’s Dan’s pursuit and taming of jet-black wild mustang Outlaw that provides the film with its best moments. Outlaw himself was played by Highland Dale, who as we shall see had a busy schedule in the 1950s.

George Sherman’s ‘Calamity Jane & Sam Bass’ (1949) also features horse racing as a key plot component. Sam Bass (Howard Duff), a farm boy from Indiana, arrives in the Texan town of Denton and wins a stake by betting on Calamity Jane’s horse Thunderbolt, against the seemingly invincible Denton Mare in a big horse race. This supposed biopic is as romanticised and inaccurate as they come, as it depicts Bass’s descent in outlawry. After the race, Sam manages to buy the Denton Mare and joins a cattle drive to Abilene. En route Sam races the Mare against various cowboys’ steeds and wins money, but in Abilene town tyrant Harry Dean (Marc Lawrence) wins a high-stakes horse race by poisoning the Mare. The drovers have put their entire savings, plus all the proceeds they had from the cattle sale, on the Denton Mare to win. When they realise they have been tricked, Sam and his friends hold up the stage that Dean is travelling on, to take back their money and an outlaw gang is born.

Throughout the story, Sam is torn between two women – lovely storekeeper Kathy Egan (Dorothy Hart), the sister of Denton sheriff Will Egan (Willard Parker) and altogether livelier Calamity Jane, as colourfully played by Yvonne De Carlo. De Carlo looks tremendous when she arrives on screen here, in a fringed buckskin outfit and wearing bright red lippy. She reappears at various points in Sam’s life, even saving him from jail and lending him her horse to make his escape, as he becomes a fugitive – albeit as an innocent victim of injustice. It’s a shame she’s not onscreen more, as Calam is the film’s best ingredient, predating Doris Day’s more famous portrayal of the frontierswoman by four years. Despite occasional flashes of realism, this is an idealised Hollywood western, with colourful costumes and perfect landscapes highlighted in magnificent photography. The big race in Abilene was filmed at Kanab Rodeo Grounds (aka Kanab Racetrack) in Utah, with many sequences filmed in the Kanab landscape, including Kanab Canyon and the sets at Kanab Movie Ranch. Other scenes were filmed at the Iverson Ranch in Chatsworth, California (the bank robbery scene) and Red Rock Canyon State Park, at Cantil, California. In supporting roles, Lloyd Bridges played cattle trail boss Joel Collins, Houseley Stevenson was irascible cook Dakota and Norman Lloyd was Sam’s eventual betrayer Jim Murphy (that morsel at least was based on fact). Some of the cattle drive sequences are very familiar, as it’s stock footage lifted from ‘Cattle Drive’.

BY MARK CERULLI

After one hundred years of turning dreams into cinematic reality, Technicolor became only the second company to be awarded a coveted Star by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.The ceremony took place on March 30. 

Although world famous for bringing color to the movies, especially in iconic films like Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, Technicolor has adapted to the times. It withdrew from 35MM film processing a number of years ago and is now firmly in the digital era. The company also holds over 40,000 patents and its technology can be found in flat screens and other consumer products.

At the ceremony, attended by actor Edward James Olmos and distinguished cinematographer and ASC President Richard Crudo, Technicolor’s CEO, Frederic Rose said the company strives to “bring a soul, a spirit, a feeling to what is being created.” Since Technicolor is known as a “Creative Technology Company”, Rose noted that “technology is an enabler, it’s something that allows a director or cinematographer to stretch the boundaries and create something that has never been seen before.”

Technicolor senior executives at the unveiling ceremony.

Fully 70% of current blockbusters and 50% of the recent Super Bowl ads feature visual effects created by Technicolor through companies like the Mill and MPC in London. Some of their recent triumphs include providing visual effects for The Revenant and winning an Oscar for sound mixing on Whiplash. James Bond fans will remember the rich Technicolor look of many of the classic films and the company has continued that partnership in the 21^st Century by creating striking visual effects on Skyfall and Spectre as well as sound mixing on both films. (Skyfall’s audio mix won an Oscar for sound editing.)

After the star was unveiled, members of the press were escorted to an expansive conference room where examples of Technicolor’s classic film library restoration and upscaling (from SDR to HDR) were being played. Let’s just say a treated 36 year-old clip looked jaw-droppingly crisp, the colors popping off the screen. The company is also heavily involved in next generation technologies like VR. Goggles were available to see demo reels including an amazing clip of The Martian VR Experience, Sony’s Goosebumps and a project for Gatorade that makes the viewer feel what it’s like to be a major league baseball player.

It was a proud day for the venerable company, but as CEO Frederic Rose promised, “the next 100 years will be even more exciting.”

BY DOUG OSWALD

Randolph Scott plays a former Confederate spy in the 1953 western “The Stranger Wore a Gun.” When the movie starts, Jeff Travis (Scott) is involved in a brutal murder during the final days of the Civil War while spying for Quantrill' Raiders, a gang of notorious Confederate guerrillas. A wanted man after the war, Travis heads west to Arizona to start a new life. Josie Sullivan (Claire Trevor) helps him escape from a river boat and meets up with him later in Arizona. Travis also meets up with one of his former Quantrill Raider associates, Jules Mourret (George Macready), who offers him a position in his new gang of outlaws so he can continue to steal “Yankee gold.”

Mourret wants Travis to continue his old ways as a spy and pretends to be a detective sent by the stage line to investigate recent gold robberies. Travis meets the local stage line owner Jason Conroy (Pierre Watkin) and his pretty daughter Shelby (Joan Weldon) and both take a liking to him. Travis plays Mourret against rival gang leader Degas (Alfonso Bedoya) and tries to turn Mourret’s own men against each other. Dan Kurth (Lee Marvin) and Bull Slager (Ernest Borgnine) are part of Mourret’s gang of cutthroats and naturally they don’t trust Travis.

The movie is filled with action scenes staged for the 3-D camera and they look a bit silly on the flat screen. However, the movie has high production value, fine performances and is high on action with one particularly brutal scene of a man having objects shot off his head by a drunk Degas and his equally drunk sidekick as the man begs for his life. Travis shows up and departs, leaving Degas to continue his deadly game. The move comes to a predictable conclusion with a fire, gunfights and Travis and Josie departing on the stage together.

DeToth and Scott made six movies together, all westerns; “Man in the Saddle” (1951), “Carson City” (1952), “The Stranger Wore a Gun” (1953), “Thunder Over the Plains” (1953), “Riding Shotgun” (1954) and “The Bounty Hunter” (1954). DeToth was known for the gritty depiction of violence in his movies, many of them crime thrillers and westerns, but he is also remembered as the director of one of the greatest horror movies ever made. No stranger to 3-D, he helmed the horror masterpiece, “House of Wax” for Warner Bros. in the same year he made “The Stranger Wore a Gun.” The irony is that the Hungarian born director only had one eye and lacked the depth perception to enjoy the fruits of his 3-D labor. Yet he directed what is considered to be both the greatest 3-D movie and one of the best horror flicks ever made. The first wave of 3-D movies was released throughout the 1950s, but the process was costly and cumbersome with few theaters set up to project in the duel strip 3-D process.

Columbia chose the right director for a 3-D western, but this movie was only shown in that format in its early engagements. Watching it in 2-D one can still see where 3-D effects were used as guns are fired, flaming torches, chairs and whisky bottles are tossed directly toward the camera at every opportunity.

The Explosive Media DVD is Region 2 so you’ll need the appropriate player (though some viewers report they had no problem playing it on their Region 1 units.) The movie audio options are German and the original English. Extras include a photo montage of advertising material and a couple of trailers, including one where Scott promotes the virtues of three dimensions, Technicolor and stereo. The picture and sound quality are terrific and the movie concludes after a brisk 79 minutes. Well worth the time for classic western fans.

(Note: Explosive Media titles are primarily available through Amazon Germany. However, imports often turn up on eBay and Amazon in other countries.) 

BY DOUG OSWALD

Randolph Scott became a top box-office draw starring in 105 movies in a career which lasted for nearly four decades. He’s best remembered as a western icon in a career that, in many ways, rivals that of John Wayne. While the Duke made movies into the mid 1970s and made appearances on TV until his death in 1979, Scott retired from acting in 1962 after making “Ride the High Country” for Sam Peckinpah. Scott was 64 and felt he could not surpass his performance in that movie. He remained happily retired until his death in 1987 at the age of 87.

Scott, like the Duke, is known for his collaboration with an iconic larger-than-life Hollywood director. In Scott’s case the honor goes to Budd Boetticher. They made seven movies together and “The Tall T” is among their best efforts. Based on a story by Elmore Leonard with a screenplay by future western director Burt Kennedy, the story is simple and starts out at a leisurely pace.

Scott plays Pat Brennan, a former ranch hand with a small ranch of his own who wants to make a deal with his former employer at the Tall T. On the way he visits a friend and his son who operate a stage coach water stop outside of town. The boy admires the heroic Pat and asks if he will pick up some candy in town which Pat agrees to do. In town Pat meets up with Ed Rintoon, the local stage coach driver, played by Arthur Hunnicutt. They discuss the recent marriage of local mine heiress Doretta, played by Maureen O’Sullivan, (Jane in the MGM Tarzan series), to the opportunist Willard Mims who married her for her wealth. Pat heads over to the Tall T to purchase a bull for his small ranch, but after making a bet with his former employer who wants him back, ends up losing his horse when he fails in his bid to ride the bull.

Making his way on foot with candy, saddle and pack in hand, Pat is picked up by Rintoon who is transporting newlyweds Willard and Doretta Mims. Willard would just as soon not pick up Pat, but is persuaded by Doretta. They make there way to the water stop which is strangely empty. Three men with guns are waiting for the bank stagecoach and have murdered the boy and his father and kill Rintoon after a brief shootout. Willard selfishly convinces the outlaws that his wife is worth holding for a ransom and makes a deal allowing him to deliver a message to her father.

Richard Boone plays Frank Usher, the leader of the gang, and he agrees that a ransom may be a better option than a stagecoach robbery. He’s aided by Henry Silva as Chink and Skip Homeier as Billy Jack. Frank claims to be a man with moral values like Pat while Chink and Billy are only interested in getting drunk and spending time at any available whorehouse. Billy keeps the candy Pat brought for the murdered boy and the candy is slapped from his hand by Frank. Frank, Chink and Billy take Pat and Doretta to a desert hideout and wait for Willard’s return. The men make it clear that they are willing to kill their captives and Pat realizes that all three will be dead when the ransom is delivered. Boone is terrific as Frank Usher. Frank is a complicated bad guy who understands the moral code of good men like Pat Brennan. In typical anti-hero fashion, Frank tries to convince Frank that he’s not like Chink and Billy. He isn’t, but that doesn’t stop Frank from using Pat’s moral code in order to manipulate everyone.

The “Tall T” would appear to be an odd choice for the title of this movie. The ranch plays a very small part in the movie and is never discussed after Pat loses the bet. The original title was "The Captives" which is the title of Elmore Leonard's original story. "The Tall Rider" is believed by some to be still another pre-release title, but the final title was changed to "The Tall T" which is the name of the Tenvoorde ranch. The movie is enjoyable and the performances by Scott, Boone, O’Sullivan, Hunnicutt and Silva are a testament to Boetticher as an auteur of highly stylized westerns. Henry Silva is of particular interest as the villainous Chink and his performance manages to slightly outdo Boone who is also in top form.

Released by Columbia in April 1957, the sound quality on the disc is near perfect and the Technicolor is beautifully preserved in widescreen. The movie is only 78 minutes long and it feels like it should be longer. The movie was previously released on DVD by Sony as part of “The Films of Budd Boetticher” and was one of five Scott/Boetticher movies in the set which is loaded with extras. That set is out of print and can fetch a premium price on-line. This version of “The Tall T” is a burn to order DVD released as part of the Sony Choice Collection and there are no extras on the disc which starts up without a menu.

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By Hank Reineke

Perhaps it is only fitting that area meteorologists would forewarn ominously that the Mahoning Drive-in Theater’s “Christopher Lee Tribute” might take place on a cold and dark and stormy night. After all, it was the villainous film legacy of the actor – who passed away at age 93 on June 7th of this year – to have frightened generations of moviegoers in such a bleakly nightmarish rain-soaked setting. As it happened, while the shivery autumnal chill on Saturday night was undeniable, there was – happily - nary a sprinkle of precipitation to obscure one’s windshield view of the drive-in’s massive CinemaScope screen.

The Mahoning Drive-in, located amidst the Pocono Mountains surrounding Lehighton, Pennsylvania, is – quite frankly – an anomaly amongst the anomalies of surviving drive-in theaters. Whilst most remaining drive-ins have been forced to move cautiously and expensively to digital projection systems or else suffer their screens going dark, the Mahoning has survived this past year through a series of weekend-only 35mm retro-film screenings. The Mahoning has undoubtedly provided some great repertory movie-going fun this past summer; only time will tell if the theater’s unorthodox business model is sustainable.

I was pleased to learn that the Mahoning had set aside a night’s programming to commemorate the legacy of the great Christopher Lee, the saturnine and elegant British actor who appeared in innumerable films over a career lasting near seven-decades. I admit to some bafflement when first seeing the handbill advertising the evening’s selection of films: “Hercules in the Haunted World,””Horror Express,” and “Psycho Circus.” It was an odd sort of tribute program as it would not feature a single popularly acclaimed classic from the honoree’s deep back catalog. Instead, the program was seemingly drawn from a triad of second (and perhaps third) tier-efforts celebrated only among the cognoscenti. I made my peace with the program when I recognized two of the three films scheduled would likely rarely – if ever – be presented from original 35mm elements anywhere in the world in the year 2015.

In any event, the more celebrated legacy of Christopher Lee was amply exemplified throughout the evening with a series of vintage trailers. The crew at the Mahoning promised a cavalcade of Lee-related trailers between features and they delivered handsomely. There were the requisite Hammer trailers, of course: “Horror of Dracula,” “Dracula Has Risen from the Grave,” “Scream of Fear,” “Rasputin, the Mad Monk,” “The Devil-Ship Pirates,” and “She,” as well as such combo-bill late-night drive-in madness as “Dracula: Prince of Darkness/”Plague of the Zombies” and “Scars of Dracula/Horror of Frankenstein.” Lee’s non-Hammer horror film work was represented with a pair of trailers featuring Tigon’s “The Creeping Flesh” and A.I.P’’s “The Oblong Box.” Perhaps more enjoyable, if only as a kitschy reminder that there were some mind-numbing clunkers as well, were the trailers for “The Return of Captain Invincible” (1983) and “Arabian Adventure” (1979).

The night’s features kicked off with a gorgeous 35mm Technicolor print of Mario Bava’s handsomely mounted “Hercules in the Haunted World.” Originally released in Italy in 1961 as “Ercole al Centro Della Terra,” the film was belatedly marketed to English-speaking countries as “Hercules against the Vampires” or under other similar but variant titles. This opportunistic marketing strategy – no matter how false – was designed, no doubt, to ride the gold sovereign lined coattail pockets of Lee’s mid-60s popularity as the reigning Count Dracula of the Hammer film series. In a tacked-on preamble to the U.S. version of the film (released in 1963), Lee’s character, King Lycos, is even described on the film’s soundtrack as a “diabolical vampire” which he, most certainly is not… or, at least, not in the more accepted use of the term.

The storyline itself is essentially a paint-by-numbers swords-and-sandals epic with the usual mythological trappings and supernatural overtones, but is rescued from the ordinary by Bava’s eerie visualization of the subterranean underworld. Hercules (played by the British bodybuilder Reg Park) must travel to Hades, the God Pluto’s grim “Kingdom of the Dead,” to rescue his true love, the Princess Deianira. Bava’s ghastly underworld is soberly realized with blue-green tinted labyrinth passageways of swirling mists, of knotty limbs and thorny vines that hang spookily from dead trees, and of subterranean lakes of fiery lava. Lee strikes a suitably menacing figure as the scheming and sadistic King Lycos, though his performance is partly handicapped by the fact that the actor’s voice is dubbed throughout. One cannot help but mourn the absence of the villainous gravitas of Lee’s inflected speaking voice. (Click here to order this film from Amazon) 

The night’s second feature, “Horror Express (1972)” was the anchor to the evening’s triptych program. Likely the film most familiar to U.S. enthusiasts due to it being in near constant rotation on “Chiller Theater” type-programming in the 1970s and 1980s, this soon-to-be-neglected Spanish-British co-production eventually fell into public domain status and became a staple of every low-budget VHS and DVD collector’s set.

Following several minutes of exposition in the snow-capped mountains of Manchuria’s Hangchow Province, the remainder of the film is set in the claustrophobic confines of the Trans-Siberian Express. Lee plays Professor Alexander Saxton, a stern and humorless – but nonetheless prominent – anthropologist who believes he’s discovered the “remarkable fossil” of the proverbial Missing Link. Things take a turn for the worse when a curious fellow scientist (Peter Cushing), intrigued by his rival colleague’s secretiveness, bribes an ill-fated coachman to take a peek inside the heavily chained and padlocked crate. This proves to be unfortunate as the fossil, which proves to be not as extinct as one might wish, is released. The creature proceeds to lumber freely around the train carriage, terrifying and absorbing the brains of his fellow passengers. (Click here to order this film from Amazon).

The evening’s final film was “Psycho Circus” (alternate British title “Circus of Fear”) one of a number of Anglo-German co-productions ministered by Harry Alan Towers which featured Lee as the marquee star in the years 1965-1970. Tower and Lee enjoyed a measure of box-office success bringing Sax Rohmer’s notorious (and extremely politically incorrect) super-villain “Fu Manchu” to the big screen. Though Towers’s series of “Fu Manchu” films with Lee, admittedly, varied widely in quality, they remain enjoyable popcorn programmers to this very day. For this film they looked to the novelist Edgar Wallace for inspiration. There were two versions of Wallace’s “Circus of Fear” (the original 1966 British title): a longer color German version directed by Werner Jacobs and an English version helmed by John Moxey of “City of the Dead” and “The Night Stalker” fame.

BY BILL DUELLY

A wonderful, eclectic hodgepodge collection of vintage 3-D, tests, shorts, animation and trailers has been released on Blu Ray recently by Flicker Alley.  3-D Rarities, released on the Flicker Alley label, is for film and nostalgia buffs, alike. This is a wonderful snapshot of 3-D motion picture photography from early tests in the 1920’s up through 1962, and arrives in time to honor the 100-year anniversary of the exhibition of 3D films.

3-D wasn’t just a brief fad in the 50’s but was found in sporadic use for specialized presentations up through then. Early surviving shorts show us wonderful glimpses of Washington DC and New York City, with wonderful perspective. Two company films follow, Thrills For You and New Dimensions. Thrills for You was produced by The Pennsylvania Railroad for exhibition at the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1940 in San Francisco. This B&W wonder gives a viewer an all too brief look at railroading in its heyday from GG1 electrics, steam engines and the lounge cars (although why an East Coast Railroad would promote itself on the West Coast and not in its own territory is beyond me). New Dimensions is an eye popping Technicolor feast of animation, produced for exhibition at the 1940 Worlds Fair. Perfectly synchronized with music and effects, a Chrysler is assembled one piece at a time.

As the collection moves into the 50’s, the disc contains 3-D trailers for: It Came From Outer Space; Hannah Lee; The Maze and Miss Sadie Thompson. Shorts include special intros for the first 3-D film, Bwana Devil, hosted by Lloyd Nolan (with a guest appearance by Beany & Cecil); Stardust in Your Eyes, which played with Robot Monster and features comic Slick Slaven, doing impressions, telling some jokes and singing a tune or two.

Doom Town is a very odd take on the Atom Bomb and tests that were being done at Yucca Flats. Somewhat flippant in its tone and very critical of this new super weapon, it only played a few bookings and disappeared from view. Another great short is the Casper cartoon Boo Moon, another Technicolor visual feast.

What is most noteworthy (and appreciated) is the restoration/cleanup work that has been done on these films. Many were transferred from the only surviving elements and had properties such as color fade, shrinkage and other damage. The bane of 3-D presentations was always the potential of a technical foul-up that even one frame could produce. The images here are extremely clean and have been color corrected and registered in place to be able to deliver a comfortable 3-D viewing experience (and will always be in sync when viewed from this Blu-Ray). Kudos to Bob Furmanek at the 3-D Archive for finding these gems as well as Greg Kintz for the digital restoration. They both deserve a big hand for their efforts.

There are plenty of other shorts, including some risqué footage shot by, pre-Godfather, film student Francis Ford Coppola, as well as a very informative, multi-page booklet with essays on every short in there. It is certainly worth the modest price for these nostalgic treats.

An abbreviated version of the contents have just completed a successful run at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and will be showing up in special engagements across the country this summer. Please check http://www.3dfilmarchive.com/3-d-rarities for further information about this project and others.

Bonus Materials Include:

- Introductions by Leonard Maltin and Trustin Howard.
- Essays by Julian Antos, Hillary Hess, Thad Komorowski, Donald McWilliams, Ted Okuda, Mary Ann Sell and Jack Theakston.
- 3-D photo galleries - Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), New York World's Fair (1939), Sam Sawyer View-Master reels (1950) and 3-D Comic Books (1953).
- 3-D footage directed by Francis Ford Coppola from The Bellboy and the Playgirls (1962).
- Commentary tracks by Thad Komorowski and Jack Theakston.

TO WATCH THE 3-D VERSIONS OF THESE FILMS, YOU NEED:
- 3D HDTV
- COMPATIBLE 3D GLASSES
- BLU-RAY 3DTM PLAYER OR PLAYSTATION 3 SYSTEM*
- HIGH-SPEED HDMI CABLE

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By Todd Garbarini

“The dark corners of the human mind are the deepest dark, I believe, of anything in the universe,” once said author, playwright, producer, and director Arch Oboler in describing his infamous radio plays of the 1930s and 1940s which aired on NBC under the title of Lights Out! It is no secret that some of the world's most well-known artists, everyone from author Edgar Allan Poe to film director Dario Argento, have channeled nightmarish experiences from their childhood and woven them into the very fabric of their stories and films. The late great surrealist Swiss artist Hans Rudolf Giger, known internationally as H.R. Giger, also sublimated his fears and frustrations into startling and often horrific imagery that coupled man with machinery as he explored the triptych of existence: birth, life, and death. Audiences are taken behind the scenes of this master painter in the elegiac final days of his life in the new film Dark Star: H.R. Giger’s World, directed by Belinda Sallin, which opens May 15, 2015 in selected cities. Although a documentary, Passagen, was made about his work in 1972 by Fredi M. Murer, Dark Star showcases interviews with the people closest to this man who shunned the limelight and preferred to paint on his own terms.

Härr Giger passed away just after filming finished. The film does an expert job of taking us through his life as he imparts interesting anecdotes, such as showing us a skull that his father gave him as a boy, which frightened him until he found a way to overcome his fear. This skull indubitably played a huge roll in his life and work. He meets with friends and family who are lucky enough to spend their time with him. Much of the dialog is spoken in Swiss German and subtitles are provided.

Dark Star opens with placid and calm shots of the artist’s house in Zürich, Switzerland. The camera pans around the grounds and above the abode and the trees until it zeros in on the front door and, in a maneuver eerily reminiscent of Dorothy Gale’s journey from black and white into Technicolor, the door opens to reveal this dark world of surrealistic paintings. These unbelievable images, which exist in the form of finished paintings as well as macabre sculptures, date back to the 1960’s. Like most artists, images and emotions fueled Härr Giger’s work, and he had his own method of painting which incorporated air brushing while listening to Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Not surprisingly, childhood experiences factored greatly as a catalyst for his disturbing imagery. A trip to the Raetian Museum in Chur, Switzerland as a young lad was particularly frightening when he saw a mummy for the first time.

His tumultuous relationship with actress and model Li Tobler, whom he was with from 1966 until 1975, figures prominently in many of the works that populate his Necronomicon books. Härr Giger, enfeebled and walking with a cautious gait, speaks eloquently about the loss of Frau Tobler who shot herself at age 27 after suffering for years from severe depression.

Following this tragedy, Härr Giger’s work caught the attention of film director Ridley Scott, who was in the midst of pre-production on 20^th Century Fox’s Alien (1979), who was by his own admission bowled over by the creations he saw in Necronomicon. These images provided the basis for the titular monster, and it was this blockbuster science fiction film franchise that catapulted an unassuming Giger to superstardom and into the public consciousness for all-time. The set design is known for its heavy emphasis on sexual imagery. His then-wife, Mia Bonzanigo, was there to see him win the Oscar for Alien.

Härr Giger’s widow, Carmen Maria Giger, expatiates on her late husband’s sense of perception and his masterful melding of human anatomy and machines. By his own admission, one of his paintings came about due to a trip he had on LSD.

Despite his fragile state, Härr Giger still managed to make it to public appearances when museums mounted exhibitions of his work, such as the Lentos Art Museum in Austria. The droves of fans who flocked to see him came from all sorts of backgrounds, and many of them possessed tattoos of his artwork that covered their arms, legs, and backs.

The film leaves the viewer with an interesting overview of an artist who succeeded in what he set out to do, and was complacent in himself and his work.

By Mark Cerulli

The 1951 film The Tales of Hoffmann, the acclaimed British adaptation of the opera by Jaques Offenbach, was an early influence on major directors like Cecil B. DeMille, George Romero (who said it was “the movie that made me want to make movies”) and Martin Scorsese. They were drawn to co-directors, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger’s inventive camera work, vibrant color palette (each of the three acts has its own primary color) and smooth blending of film, dance and music. According to an interview found on Powell-Pressburger.org, Powell wanted to do a “composed film” – shot entirely to a pre-recorded music track, in this case, Offenbach’s opera. Not having to worry about sound meant he could remove the cumbersome padding that encased every Technicolor camera and really move it around production designer Hein Heckroth’s soaring sets. (Heckroth’s work on the film earned him two 1952 Oscar nominations.)

The film’s extensive restoration was sponsored by Scorsese’s Film Foundation and the BFI Film Archive, in association with Studiocanal. The entire project was overseen by Powell’s widow, longtime Scorsese editor Thelma Schoonmaker. In fact it was Scorsese who had introduced Powell to Schoonmaker, resulting in their 1984 marriage.

Ms. Schoonmaker – on location in Taiwan to work on Scorsese’s next film, Silence - said the director was obsessed (in a good way!) with her late husband’s and his partner’s work. She stated that Scorsese says their films are “in his DNA.” He was particularly interested in The Tales of Hoffmann because it taught him about moving the camera, capturing the body language of actors and “celebrating the emotion of music.”

Aside from the film’s pristine new look (which took over six months of “very intense” work), this version features 6 minutes missing from the Third Act, apparently cut by producer Alexander Korda who had wanted the filmmakers to drop Act Three entirely! Another gem found in BFI’s vaults was an epilogue the directors shot to introduce the opera singers who voiced the dancers appearing in the film. As Schoonmaker recalls, “Since no sound track was found for it, I created a sound track of applause and music from the film. No one had ever seen this epilogue, because it was never on the original release prints.” It’s a delightful piece of filmmaking whimsy that has gone unseen for over six decades.

The film had been previously restored in the 1980s using the Technicolor three strip Interpositive, but during the intervening years, the three-color strips had shrunk, creating fuzzy images even after restoration. But as Schoonmaker relates, this version remedies that, and then some… “The new restoration was able to digitally realign the three strips perfectly. The rich color of the film was rebuilt layer by layer, an arduous process, until the restorers were satisfied the film looked as it had when it was first made. “

Overseeing the entire process along with Schoonmaker was a true student of the film – Martin Scorsese!

“Scorsese knew the film intimately having screened it many times on a 16mm print and through watching the Criterion DVD over and over again.” Schoonmaker recalled, noting, “I had watched the film with my late husband, Michael Powell and so Scorsese and I were able to guide the color restoration.”

The film boasts a joint writer, producer, director credit, which was quite rare in the 1950s. Schoonmaker explained that, “only Michael directed on the set, but he admired Emeric’s contribution to their films so much that he agreed to sharing the remarkable title (for the time) ‘Written, produced and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’ long before that kind of title was used as much as it is today.” The prolific duo made 19 films together.

The Tales of Hoffmann’s influence on Scorsese can be seen in his gritty 1976 masterpiece, Taxi Driver. As his three time Oscar-winning editor points out, “He (Scorsese) says the dancers in the film taught him so much about body language. And the eye movements of (actor) Robert Helpmann were a direct influence on De Niro’s eyes in the mirror of the car ...”

Having worked with the director on revered films like Raging Bull, Casino, Goodfellas, The Aviator and Wolf of Wall Street – in fact on every Scorsese film since 1980 – Thelma Schoonmaker should know!

The Rialto Pictures release of the restored and expanded The Tales of Hoffmann opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday March 13^th, with other cities to follow.

Cinema Retro has received the following press release:

Revisit 1939, Hollywood’s Greatest Year, with 4 New Blu-ray™ Debuts

THE GOLDEN YEAR COLLECTION JUNE 9

Features Newly Restored Blu-ray Debut of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Starring Charles Laughton, and Blu-ray Debuts of – Bette Davis’ Dark Victory, Errol Flynn’s Dodge City and Greta Garbo’s Ninotchka. Collection also includes Gone With the Wind.

Burbank, Calif. March 10, 2015 – On June 9, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment will celebrate one of the most prolific twelve months in Hollywood’s history with the 6-disc The Golden Year Collection. Leading the five-film set will be the Blu-ray debut of

· Prophet Without Honor – Also on the Ninotchka disc

· Sword Fishing – Vintage 1939 WB Short

· Detouring America – Vintage 1939 WB Cartoon

· Peace on Earth - Vintage 1939 MGM Cartoon

· Trailers

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BY DOUG OSWALD

A rookie cop or soldier arrives at his first assignment and quickly finds they’re in the middle of some serious trouble. This basic plot has been used more times than any movie buff can count and crosses genres like westerns, war movies and cop thrillers. “Pony Soldier” is an odd western in that the action takes place in Canada and involves the Northwest Mounted Police.

It’s 1876 and Canadian Cree Indians cross the border into Montana to hunt buffalo, but are mistaken for Sioux by the U.S. Cavalry and a battle ensues. Known as long knives by the Cree because of their sabers, the Cavalry forces the Cree to retreat. The leader of the Cree kidnaps two white settlers in order to trade them for buffalo and safe passage to Canada.

Constable Duncan MacDonald, played by the ever-youthful Tyrone Power, is briefed on the problem and takes up the challenge to negotiate the freedom of the white captives. He is joined by his half-native scout and side-kick Natayo Smith, played by Thomas Gomez, in an effort to preserve the peace between the Cree, the settlers, the Mounties and the U.S. Cavalry.

MacDonald plays the diplomat cop very well and gains a reluctant friendship with the Cree chief Standing Bear, played by Stuart Randall, while clashing with the Cree soldier Konah (Cameron Mitchell), who seeks a confrontation with the U.S. Cavalry across the border in Montana.

When a mirage appears across the valley showing the ocean and a large ship, MacDonald convinces the Cree of the futility of their efforts and they reluctantly decide to consider his offer to free the white captives. It turns out one of the captives is an outlaw, Jess Calhoun (Robert Horton), who is wanted for murder by the Mounties. The woman captive is pretty Emerald Neeley (Penny Edwards), who has been chosen by Konah to be his bride.

The Northwest Mounted Police seek to maintain the peace by returning their wards, the Cree, back to their home in Canada. Power’s MacDonald is the perfect mix of level-headed constable and diplomat. He even manages to befriend a Cree orphan who wants to be his adopted son. While ever the diplomat, MacDonald is no pushover and asserts himself with the Cree and in a final confrontation with the outlaw Jess.

“Pony Soldier” looks like a typical western of the era with a Cavalry battle, horse riding stunts, shootouts and lush vistas while also presenting the native characters as more than caricatures. Many, if not all, of the native supporting cast appear to be Native Americans with Anthony Numkena, a Hopi Indian, a standout as MacDonald’s adopted son, Comes Running.

The movie is based on a Saturday Evening Post story by Garnett Weston and was directed by Joseph M. Newman. Newman helmed the sci-fi classic “This Island Earth,” the noir cult film “Dangerous Crossing,”  Tarzan, the Ape Man” and several episodes of “The Twilight Zone” and “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.”

While this movie isn’t shot in the gritty adult western style made popular by John Ford, Anthony Mann, George Stevens, John Sturges and Fred Zinnemann in the 1950s; it still manages to be entertaining as a sort of transition between the standard western formula of old Hollywood and the modern westerns being made by independent directors.

According to IMDb, this movie is the film debut of Earl Holliman and features an uncredited performance by Richard Boone. It also features narration at the end of the movie by an uncredited Michael Rennie. The movie ends with MacDonald completing his assignment followed by a contemporary tribute of the Royale Canadian Mounted Police with Rennie extolling the virtues of their continuing mission as peacekeepers.

The movie looks terrific and was filmed in Technicolor on location in the Coconino National Forrest near Sedona, Arizona, and in California’s Red Rock Canyon. The 20th Century Fox production was released in December 1952 on the eve of CinemaScope and it’s a shame this movie was not able to make use of the wide screen process.

The Twilight Time Blu-ray release, which  looks and sounds wonderful, is limited to 3,000 copies and can by ordered via Screen Archives. The score by Alex North is offered as an isolated track on the disc and is the only extra. The release also includes the usual booklet of images spread throughout an informative and entertaining essay by Julie Kirgo. Fans of Tyrone Power and “north” westerns will want to give this movie a view and possibly add a copy to their collection.

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BY JOHN M. WHALEN  

One of the hallmarks of Don Siegel’s “Dirty Harry” (1971) was the way the director shot the film on location in San Francisco. From the rooftops of Nob Hill to the streets and alleys of the Tenderloin, Siegel made the location as much a part of the story as Harry and the maniacal killer he pursues. But this skillful use of location was nothing new for Siegel. He had long since mastered that technique back in the late fifties in films like “The Lineup,” filmed in San Francisco in 1958, and “Edge of Eternity,” shot in Arizona near the Grand Canyon a year later.

In “The Lineup” Siegel and screenwriter Stirling Silliphant concocted a brilliant tale with off-beat characters and off-the-wall dialog, and gave movie goers a breathtaking tour of San Francisco, most of which, sadly, is no longer there. In “Edge of Eternity,” he had a less compelling script to work with, but the Technicolor and Cinemascope photography of the Grand Canyon and Lake Mead by Burnett Guffey more than compensates.

The opening shots of “Edge of Eternity” show a car stopping near the edge of the canyon. A man in a suit gets out of the car. Another man dressed in work clothes appears and tries to throw him over the edge. A fight ensues, the car falls into the canyon and in the movie’s first surprise, it’s the second man, the would-be murderer, who goes over after it.

Cut to Deputy Sheriff Les Martin (Cornell Wilde). Driving around the canyon on patrol, he comes across the caretaker of an abandoned gold mine who tells him about the man we saw escape death at the canyon, who’s all beat up and asking for help from the police. At that moment, Janice Kendon (Victoria Shaw), daughter of a wealthy mine owner, races past them recklessly in her gorgeous canary yellow 1958 Thunderbird. Martin ignores the old timer (it seems he’s kind of a coot, who cries wolf a lot) and pursues Janice.

Turns out while he’s busy writing a ticket and flirting with her, the man who got beat up at the canyon is being murdered back at the old timer’s place. So who killed him and does it have anything to do with the $20 million we’re told lies in the mine the government shut down during the war?

Those are the main plot questions, but who cares? The contrived story isn’t what really matters in Edge of Eternity. It’s the real-time, real-place feeling that Siegel manages to put on film that makes this little-known movie worth watching. Seeing Wilde and Victoria Shaw playing their parts with the Grand Canyon in the background, you hardly pay attention to the dialog anyway. All you know is there’s a murder to be solved, some back story guilt to be healed by Wilde, and a love story to be brought to a happy conclusion. Naturally, Siegel pulls it off with his usual workman-like skill.

The really fascinating thing about this movie, though, is the setting used for the movie’s climax. When the film was made there was a company known as the U.S. Guano Corp. The company had found a cave on the far side of the Canyon that was believed to contain 100,000 tons of bat guano that was rich in nitrogen and could be sold as fertilizer. The company built an expensive cable car system that ran a span of 7,500 feet to the cave.

Of course Deputy Martin and the bad guy (you’ll never guess who it is, wink, wink) have a big fist fight on the “dancing bucket” as it was affectionately known, 2,500 feet above the canyon bottom, with Janice holding on for dear life. Some of the close ups are obviously done with rear projection, but there are a couple of long shots that make you hold your breath at least for the stunt men. Overall, it’s an entertaining film with good performances, but I kept wondering what Stirling Silliphant would have done with a set up like that.

Although the copy of the film I watched was on DVD and not BluRay, Columbia Classic’s video release is extremely good. The vistas are pretty sharp and the color bright. The music by Daniele Amfitheatrof is suitably majestic and well recorded. Edge of Eternity is definitely worth watching.

As for the bat guano operation, in real life the thing turned out to be a bust when they found there was only 1,000 tons of bat doo-doo, not 100,000 tons and the site was closed down. Nonetheless it was in operation at the time of filming, and the producers, Siegel being one of them, ran a credit thanking U.S. Guano for its assistance in making the movie. That may be the first and only time Hollywood acknowledged the debt it owes to those who also wield shovels. Credit where credit is due.

(John M. Whalen is the author of "Hunting Monsters is My Business: The Mordecai Slate Stories" . Click here to order the book from Amazon 

BY DOUG GERBINO

The good folks at Warner Archives have just released a burn-to-order DVD collectionthat includes all the M-G-M shorts that the Three Stooges made at that legendary studio with their one-time manager Ted Healy. “Classic Shorts from the Dream Factory Volume 3” featuring Howard, Fine and Howard (aka Moe, Larry and Curly) features six zany shorts that need to be seen to be believed. They are:

“Plane Nuts” (1933) wherein Ted Healy attempts to get through a song with interruptions from the Stooges in between big production numbers from M-G-M's feature film “Flying High”. The Stooges’ routine is based on their vaudeville stage act.

“Roast Beef and Movies” (1934) is a two-color Technicolor short that features Jerry (Curly) Howard -without Moe & Larry- acting in support of Greek-dialect comedian George Givot. This short gives Curly the opportunity to act as the middle Stooge and allows comedian Bobby Callahan to play the kind of character Curly would normally play. The short incorporates two musical numbers lifted from earlier M-G-M Technicolor features, "The Chinese Ballet" (taken from “Lord Byron Of Broadway” (1930) and "Raising The Dust", which originally from “Children Of Pleasure” (1930).

“The Big Idea” (1934) casts Ted Healy as an “Idea Man for Hire” who comes up with insane concepts for film plots. The Stooges drop in and out playing the old Civil War tune "Marching Through Georgia" with soaking results. A deleted number from M-G-M's “Dancing Lady” rounds out this final M-G-M short made by the Stooges.

“Beer and Pretzels” (1933) presents the second M-G-M short made by Healy and the Stooges. In this one, we find them being thrown out of work in a theater and getting jobs as performing waiters in a German-style beer hall with predictable results.

“Nertsery Rhymes” (1933): In this, the first M-G-M short to feature Ted Healy and His Stooges, the boys play Healy's "sons". Their pleas to their Papa to tell them a bedtime story leads to a lot of eye gouging, cranium smacking and hair pulling in the pre-code film. The use of two-strip Technicolor was predicated on the fact that most of the shorts in this collection (and many other from M-G-M between 1930 - 1934) were making use of material from an abandoned feature film M-G-M made in 1930 entitled “The March of Time”, which had been shot in two-color Technicolor. M-G-M was a factory known to never waste anything, including valuable film stock. Thus, the Healy and the Stooges footage was filmed to wrap around these big production numbers, that were largely designed by ballet's Albertina Rasch (the wife of legendary film composter composer Dimitri Tiomkin).

“Hello Pop!” (1933) The real prize of this collection is this Technicolor gem. Restored in 2013 after being lost for over 40 years, this film had its resurrection last year at Film Forum in New York City. Through the hard work of The Vitaphone Project, YCM Laboratories and the good folks at Warner Bros., this "Holy Grail" for Stooge fans can now be yours. In this short, Ted Healy is a nervous wreck who is trying to put on a Broadway show. Besides dealing with temperamental artists (the great Henry Armetta, among them) he has his three "sons" to deal with, and you can guess who plays them. Two Technicolor musical numbers round out this short.

Picture quality is excellent, particularly when you consider that “Hello Pop!” was made from the only existing 35mm print. If you love the Stooges, as well as historic golden oldies, this release is a “must”. Get it, and sit back and "NYUK" it up.

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By Fred Blosser

Except maybe for Michael Caine and Ernest Borgnine, has any other actor ever starred in more movies, ranging more widely from classic (“A Star Is Born,” “North by Northwest,” “Lolita”) to cult (“The Pumpkin Eater,” “Cross of Iron”), to the campy and B-level titles that partially rounded out the final two decades of his career (“Bad Man’s River,” “Mandingo”), than James Mason (1909-1984)?

Two releases from the Warner Archive Collection showcase Mason’s versatility in mid-career films that could hardly be farther apart in theme and subject matter.

“The Decks Ran Red” (1958) was one of Mason’s two collaborations with producer/director Andrew L. Stone in the late ‘50s. Ed Rummill (Mason), a hardworking and ambitious first officer on a luxury liner, is offered the command of the S.S. Berwind, a merchant ship, after the previous captain unexpectedly dies. “You might be smart to pass this up,” one of his superiors cautions, noting that the Berwind has a restless crew and a troubled history. Rummill eagerly jumps at the opportunity for advancement anyway. Presently, flying to the remote New Zealand port where the Berwind is docked, his enthusiasm is dampened on first sight of the ship: “As dirty, as miserable, as rusted-up an old tub as I’d ever seen.”

But dirt and rust are the least of his worries. Crewman Scott (Broderick Crawford), abetted by his crony Martin (Stuart Whitman), begins to stir up mutiny even before the Berwind leaves port. Scott’s plan is this: after they put out to sea, he’ll nudge the mutineers into killing Rummill and the other officers. Then he and Martin in turn will murder their fellow crewmen. Once they dispose of the bodies, the two conspirators will partially scuttle the ship and bring it in as an abandoned derelict, collecting a reward for recovering the vessel: one million dollars, half the value of the Berwind and its cargo. Further creating strife, a beautiful woman comes aboard for the voyage (Dorothy Dandridge), the wife of the new ship’s cook. Scott gleefully figures that the presence of the “well-stacked doll” will ratchet tensions even higher.

Stone’s direction is so efficient and the sleek Mason and rumpled Crawford are so well contrasted as the main antagonists that you’re tempted to overlook lapses in logic and continuity as the movie proceeds. The ship’s routine appears so orderly and the crew so sedate that the mutiny angle never really comes together. Stone seems to recognize about halfway through that the narrative is about to stall, and so Scott abruptly abandons the mutiny scheme, breaks out his stash of firearms, corners the officers on the bridge, and with Martin’s help begins to pick off the other crewmen. Rummill begins as a character on a human scale, competent but fallible, but by the end of the movie, he’s swimming across a choppy ocean and scaling the side of the ship like an action hero for a final confrontation with Scott. Similarly, Dandridge’s character, Mahia, never quite seems to come into focus either; calculatedly seductive one minute, scared and helpless the next. An early scene suggests that she will pose a sexual challenge to the happily married Rummill, as Mason muses in voiceover, “It never entered my mind that the woman would be so sensuous and so exotically beautiful.” But Rummill keeps hands off, regarding her as more a nuisance on the already troubled ship than an object of desire.

Perhaps the movie is best enjoyed as the cinematic equivalent of 1950s men’s pulps like “Male” and “Saga,” which marketed lurid tales of modern-day piracy, danger at sea, and exotic sex as true stories. Mason’s voiceover narrative even has the same overheated prose style: “There was a ship named the S.S. Berwind. This is the story of that ship . . . A story which actually happened . . . A story of the most infamous, diabolically cunning crime in the annals of maritime history.” The name “Ed Rummill” is suspiciously similar to “Erwin Rommel,” Mason’s famous role in “The Desert Fox” (1951); maybe Stone and Mason were having a little fun with the audience.

In Sidney Lumet’s “The Sea Gull” (1968), an ensemble cast enacts Chekhov’s tragedy of frustrated lives and misguided love in a circle of well-to-do landowners, actors, and aspiring artists in late 19th Century Russia. Mason shares roughly equal screen time with Simone Signoret, Vanessa Redgrave, David Warner, Harry Andrews, Alfred Lynch, Denholm Elliott, and Kathleen Widdoes, but in a sense he’s first among equals. He has top billing as Trigorin, a popular but second-rate novelist. He’s the subject of the first close-up in the film in a brief, wordless scene added by Lumet and screenwriter Moura Budberg that doesn’t appear in the original play. And the role of Trigorin is a pivotal one, whose actions lead to calamity for two of the other characters in the final act.

It’s laudable to see any attempt to bring classic literature to the screen, especially these days, when the average person in the street, if asked to identify Chekhov, probably would answer, “Isn’t he that guy from ‘Star Trek’?” I give Lumet and his cast high marks for ambition, even if they never quite surmount the challenge of translating Chekhov’s complex, allusive work to the visual, kinetic medium of film.

Two basic problems, one relating to casting and the other to performance, beset the movie. While Warner and Redgrave are fine actors, they’re too old at 27 and 31, respectively, to play Chekhov’s Konstantin and Nina. I knew lots of kids like Chekhov’s Konstantin in my college literature and drama courses, bright but immature 20-year-olds with mother fixations. At 27, Warner seems like a case of arrested development. Likewise, it’s affecting when Chekhov’s 17- or 18-year-old Nina attaches herself to the older Trigorin, and you realize, even if she doesn’t, that her infatuation will not end well; Redgrave looks like a woman in her twenties who should know better. Mason doesn’t present the same disconnect between appearance and behavior, but he brings a misplaced sense of gravity to the role of the faintly absurd Trigorin. The disreputable Mason of “The Wicked Lady” (1945) and “The Prisoner of Zenda” (1952) would better have served the role.

The Warner Archive Collection editions are bare-bones DVDs without chapter stops, subtitles, or significant extras. “The Decks Ran Red” includes the theatrical trailer. The black-and-white transfer is acceptable, and there’s a startling visual in the title credit, where “Red” in “The Decks Ran Red” stands out in bleeding crimson against the monochromic background. They do the same thing now in “Sin City” with computers; how did they do it in 1958? The transfer of “The Sea Gull” is somewhat soft, muting the Technicolor cinematography, but not objectionable. There are no extra features.

Order The Decks Ran Red here.

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RETRO-ACTIVE: THE BEST FROM THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVES

“THE FOUR FEATHERS” (The Criterion Collection)

On DVD and Blu-Ray

By Raymond Benson

Based on A.E.W. Mason’s classic 1902 adventure novel, The Four Feathers had been made three times before this definitive version of a “British Empire Adventure Film” was released in 1939. Produced by Hungarian-born but UK-based Alexander Korda, one of the great filmmakers of British cinema, and directed by his brother Zoltan Korda, The Four Feathers represents the best of what England had to offer during its day, as well as the epitome of the kind of yarns spun by Kipling and his ilk.

In vivid Technicolor and sporting a cast of hundreds of ethnic extras, the picture captures the grand Victorian era of the British military and takes place mostly in Africa some ten years or so after the fall of Khartoum. The story is simple (albeit somewhat improbable): a young officer (John Clements) is accused of cowardice by his associates and fiancée after he resigns his post on the eve of a major deployment to take back the Sudan. Setting out to prove the opposite, he disguises himself as a mute Arab so that he can “make a difference” from the inside of the enemy camp and show his “friends” what he’s really made of. At one point, his rival in love, portrayed by the excellent Ralph Richardson, is struck blind by excessive exposure to the desert sun—and our hero must help him trek across the country to safety, all without saying a word or revealing to the man that he’s his old colleague.

This particular version of The Four Feathers would be an impressive film if made today, but for 1939, it’s a masterpiece (the recent 2002 version doesn’t compare). With its tremendous logistical challenges and extreme conditions on location, the picture is a marvel to behold. It also contains tons of what are now familiar clichés of British Empirical tales, mostly embodied by the humorous performance of overly stately C. Aubrey Smith—and this, too, is a testament of the film’s influence. The picture is also a timely (and embarrassingly hilarious) lesson in how racism was taken for granted during its day.

The new Criterion edition, of course, looks gorgeous in a high-definition restoration. At that time, Natalie Kalmus (the wife of Technicolor’s inventor, Herbert Kalmus), was forced upon filmmakers as “color coordinator” if one wanted to use the process, and she had total control over its application. Whether it was appropriate or not, Natalie went for bold, vivid colors; in this case the result is happily spectacular.

The audio commentary by Charles Drazin is interesting, but the true gem of the extra features is the interview with Zoltan Korda’s son, David. He sheds light on the lives of the amazing trio of brothers—Alexander, Zoltan, and Vincent—who became one of the most important British film families in its history. There is also a vintage documentary short about the Kordas’ studio, London Films, which features rare footage of Zoltan in action directing The Four Feathers.

Just about any Criterion Collection release is a must-have. This is one has that quality in spades.

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OH, THE SCANDAL!

By Raymond Benson

Director Douglas Sirk was known primarily for his “adult” melodramas of the 1950s that usually dealt with bucking the small-town America social mores of the times. All That Heaven Allows is a prime example. In lush, bold Technicolor (the superb cinematography is by Russell Metty), Sirk tells the story of a May-September romance between an “older” widow and a younger man (in actuality, star Jane Wyman was only 38 when the film was made, and her paramour in the picture, Rock Hudson, was 30; obviously the intention was that Wyman’s character is even older, say, in her 40s, since she has college-age children). The couple must face gossip, scorn, and ultimate rejection from Wyman’s society friends and even her grown children. The message of acceptance and tolerance hits one over the head like a hammer, to be sure, but, granted, at the time the subject matter was most likely indeed scandalous to most Americans. Now it’s a big “so what.” That said, the point of the story—that women need to be responsible for their own happiness and not cater to what other people think—is still relevant today. A mother’s children will eventually grow up and leave the nest; why should she remain in an unhappy situation just to please them when they’re not even there?

Ah, but yes, Rock Hudson. Looking back at his performance in this and his other hits of the 50s and 60s and knowing what we know about him today, one cannot help but view the actor in a different light. And, for me, anyway, I saw right through Hudson’s performance. I couldn’t believe that a) Wyman fell for the guy, and b) that Hudson was really attracted to her. In 1955, the audience for whom the picture was aimed (female, I imagine) may have bought the romance; today, it’s superficial and frankly unbelievable. If there had been a bit more spark between the actors and some clues that there were aspects about each other that they found appealing (other than Hudson’s Adonis good looks), it might play better. As it is, All That Heaven Allows is now a curious relic of a time when America had more bugs up its ass than a mother spider.

The Criterion Collection presents the picture in the classiest way possible—a 2K digital restoration with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray—and it looks marvelous. Of particular interest is the extra, Rock Hudson’s Home Movies, in which we are treated to clips from his films that he edited himself; they compile the moments in which the subtext implies the truth about his sexual orientation. A Profile of Douglas Sirk, a 1979 BBC documentary, features rare interview footage and is an interesting portrait of the filmmaker. There is more, of course, in the dual Blu-ray/DVD format package, including an essay on Sirk in the accompanying booklet, written by none other than filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, whose work was inspired by the director’s pictures.

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By Howard Hughes

(The following review pertains to the UK release of the film on Region B format)  

Simple Acts of Annihilation

Dario Argento is the most famous Italian horror director to be associated with the ‘giallo’ style murder mystery films that emerged from Italy during the 1970s and early 1980s. The films were notable for their point-of-view camerawork, their unsettling atmospherics and nerve-jangling, claustrophobic scenes of terror. Argento is one of those directors you either love or hate, and his work has often been accused of being a case of style over content. His detractors cite his implausible plots, illogical loopholes, deafening soundtracks, overacting casts and over reliance on stylistic flourishes that float his slim narratives. His films are just too contrived and stylised, too gimmicky, to succeed. By contrast, Argento’s fans love his implausible plots, illogical loopholes, deafening soundtracks, overacting casts and an over reliance on stylistic flourishes. Argento’s colour cinematography is exquisite, with visual effects achieved via ingenious angles, complicated set-ups, wire-guided cameras, vivid lighting, garish colour schemes and seemingly impossible cinematic arabesques, to present moments of extreme shock and overtly choreographed violence, often unflinchingly in close-up.

Argento virtually invented ‘gialli’ with his impressive directorial debut. The murder mystery ‘The Bird With the Crystal Plumage’ (1970) benefited from Vittorio Storaro’s widescreen images in Cromoscope, Ennio Morricone’s spine-tingling score and a collection of good performances – Tony Musante and Suzy Kendall as the amateur sleuths, Eva Renzi as the gallery murder victim, Mario Adorf as a anchorite painter and Enrico Maria Salerno as the police investigator. Argento continued in a similar vein with ‘The Cat ‘o Nine Tails’ (1971) and ‘Four Flies on Grey Velvet’ (1971) – the three films became known as his ‘Animal Trilogy’ and all were scored by Morricone. Argento’s 1970s psychological thrillers reached their zenith with ‘Deep Red’ (1975), which had David Hemmings’ jazz pianist puzzling his way through a twisted whodunit. Argento then explored the supernatural with the first of his ‘Three Mothers’ trilogy, ‘Suspiria’, released in 1977. This gory cataclysm of witchery and murder remains his biggest success and finest achievement, a tour de gore. Argento has only grasped at this magnificent malfeasance occasionally since, which has left his fans expectant and frustrated in equal measure.

‘Tenebrae’ (1982) is one of Argento’s better post-‘Suspiria’ films and certainly holds its own within the ‘giallo’ canon. Written and directed by Argento, it begins with New York horror fiction writer Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa) arriving in Rome on a promotional tour for his new bestseller, a novel called ‘Tenebrae’ (which is Latin for ‘shadows’ or ‘darkness’). Pretty soon Neal finds himself embroiled in a murder investigation. Captain Germani (Giuliano Gemma) is seeking the killer of serial shoplifter Elsa Manni (Ania Pieroni), who was murdered with a cutthroat razor and is found with pages from Neal’s novel stuffed in her mouth – a modus operandi deployed in the novel itself. Asks bemused Neal of the inspector: ‘If someone is killed with a Smith & Wesson revolver, do you go and interview the president of Smith & Wesson?’ The killings continue. Tilde (Mirella D’Angelo), a journalist who is critical of Neal’s ‘sexist bullshit’ horror stories, and her on-off lover Marion (Mirella Banti) are slain in their apartment block with a razor, again in imitation of Neal’s horror fiction. Tilde’s criticism of Neal’s books parallels the charges occasionally levelled at Argento himself, as beautiful victims die beautiful deaths in the name of Argento’s artful darkness. The prime suspect in the ‘Tenebrae’ case is Cristiano Berti (John Steiner) a daytime TV book reviewer for Channel One, who is also Neal’s superfan. When an axe is planted firmly in Cristiano’s skull, he drops off the ‘wanted’ list. John Saxon played Neal’s literary agent Bulmer, Daria Nicolodi (from ‘Deep Red’) was Neal’s PA Anne, film director Enzo G. Castellari’s brother Enio Girolami appeared briefly as a store detective and Veronica Lario was Neal’s estranged, slightly unbalanced wife Jane McKarrow. Captain Germani tells Neal that he guessed the killer’s identity in the novel by page 30, but he’s not so quick on the real case. In the end, with the police stumped, Neal himself turns detective – as did Musante and Hemmings – to track down the ‘Peter Neal Tribute Act’ who is leaving a trail of corpses littering Rome.

Neal’s book is modestly described by an advert in a Rome bookstore as ‘Il giallo dell’anno, forse del deccennio’ – ‘The giallo of the year, perhaps the decade’ – and the film isn’t bad either. ‘Tenebrae’ gives Argento’s fans exactly what they want. With its gratuitous bloodletting and stylised choreography of murder, this is over-the-top, comic-book Argento, a partial return to ‘realism’ after the phantasms of ‘Suspiria’ and ‘Inferno’. The production’s backroom staff was of an excellent calibre. Horror directors Lamberto Bava and Mario Soavi were the film’s assistant directors, and the murders, involving razor, knife and axe, were staged imaginatively by Giovanni Corridor. ‘Tenebrae’ was photographed by Luciano Tovoli in Technicolor and 1.85:1 screen ratio (rather than Argento’s earlier preferred format of 2.25:1 widescreen). Some of the cinematography – pills resting on a glass tabletop, or water rinsing blood from an open razor blade – is starling in its clarity. In a terrifying sequence, a woman Maria (Lara Wendel) is chased through a park by a guard dog and inadvertently bumbles into the killer’s basement lair. Before Tilde and Marion are murdered, Argento’s camera glides up the outside of their apartment building, peeping through windows, then sweeps up over the slate roof and swoops down to the block’s stair landing, in an intricate camera take that seems inspired by Sergio Leone’s gliding Chapman crane shot at Flagstone City railway station in ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ (1968), a film Argento worked on with Leone during the treatment stage. Another victim is stabbed in broad daylight in a busy municipal square and ultra-weird flashbacks from the killer’s traumatic past depict the murder of a woman (played by transsexual ‘Eva Robins’/Roberto Coatti) who is wearing a white dress and bright red high heels. The film’s pulsating synthesizer fugues – the pumping adrenalin of the killer or the fearful, fleeing victims – were provided by Claudio Simonetti, Massimo Morante and Fabio Pignatelli, who as members of the band Goblin had such success with the soundtracks for ‘Deep Red’ and ‘Suspiria’. The film’s murders are graphically staged with zeal – the movie ran into trouble on its first release, being prosecuted as a ‘Video Nasty’ in the UK and appearing in the US in truncated form as ‘Unsane’, shorn of 10 minutes. The killings are very gory – seemingly even more so in this pristine blu-ray edition – and the house of horrors bloodbath that climaxes the film offers plenty of the red stuff and some good shocks.

Arrow Film’s new steelbook edition of ‘Tenebrae’ is the most comprehensive and impressive edition yet released. There are various prints of the film out there on DVD. One has the onscreen title as TENEBRAE and the credits and the ‘Tenebrae’ page extracts in English. Arrow’s print (running time: 1:40:53) has the onscreen title TENEBRE and the credits and pages in Italian text. I’ve never been mad about ‘Tenebrae’, but this Blu-ray release has made me re-evaluate the film as one of Argento’s superior gialli – certainly in visual terms. The colours are bold and tremendous, the cinematography in moments as delicious as anything in ‘Suspiria’ or ‘Inferno’. Those red heels have never looked so, erm, red. The feature itself is blu-ray Region B and DVD Region 2, and as well as the English language dub it is available to play with Italian audio and English subtitles. It was shot in English and Franciosa, Saxon, Steiner and Gemma voiced themselves in the English version. A wealth of extras include a collectors’ booklet with writing from Alan Jones and Peter Strickland, and an interview with cinematographer Luciano Tovoli. Copious disk extras include two audio commentaries (one by Alan Jones and Kim Newman, another by Thomas Rostock), interviews with co-star Daria Nicolodi, composer Claudio Simonetti, and author Maitland McDonagh (‘Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento’). There’s also 16 minutes of Simonetti’s band Goblin performing tracks from ‘Tenebrae’ and ‘Phenomena’ in person at a gig at Glasgow Arches. All in, this is a definitive release of what is a strong contender for Argento’s finest 1980s movie.

The steelbook edition of ‘Tenebrae’ is available now from Arrow Films.

Click here to order: http://www.arrowfilms.co.uk/tenebrae-steelbook/

Howard Hughes is the author of ‘Cinema Italiano: The Complete Guide from Classics to Cult’. 

By Lee Pfeiffer

It's conventional wisdom that 1939 is regarded as the greatest year ever for classic movies. (I respectfully argue that 1969 was even more impressive, but I digress). So many great films were released in this one calendar year: Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Gunga Din and too many others to list. Lost amid this wealth of cinematic treasures is the often-overlooked John Ford classic Drums Along the Mohawk, a movie that certainly ranks among the legendary director's best work, yet it curiously remains among his least-discussed major achievements. The movie has just been released as a Blu-ray special edition by Twilight Time. The film stars Claudette Colbert and Henry Fonda as  Lana and Gil Martin, colonial era newlyweds who leave the safety of a big city (Albany, New York) to settle in the upper Hudson Valley, then a no-man's land of hardship and danger for the farmers and settlers who tried to claw out a life there. Their marriage and move to a farm Gil has purchased happens to coincide with the outbreak of the American Revolution. Suddenly, this non-political couple who only want to prosper on their own land find themselves enmeshed in the crisis of the times. Like most farmers, their desire to opt out of the conflict between colonists and British forces turns out to be wishful thinking. The Brits have allied themselves with local Indian tribes who terrorize the settlers through constant raids, forcing them to take refuge in a local fort while they suffer the indignity of watching their farms burn. The fort only provides temporary protection. Short of ammo and provisions, the defenders realize they have precious little time to form a strategy for survival. In the film's most compelling sequence, Gil volunteers to make a seemingly suicidal run through the forest to reach reinforcements at another fort. He is doggedly pursued by three Indian braves who are hot on his heels. Ford milks considerable suspense from the sequence which foreshadows Cornel Wilde's brilliant 1966 movie The Naked Prey. As with any Ford production, however, this one spends considerable time on character development, homespun comedy and American traditions. The battle sequences are impressive but its the actors who make the most of the spotlight with both Colbert and Fonda (in his first of several collaborations with Ford) perfectly cast. There are also Ford stock company regulars like Ward Bond and John Carradine but it is Edna May Oliver who steals the show in an Oscar-nominated performance as a feisty pioneer widow whose forceful nature terrorizes the Indian warriors more than they can intimidate her. 

Drums Along the Mohawk was Ford's first color film. It was shot in Technicolor but apparently Fox tossed out the original film elements in the 1970s. This restored version is obviously not as gorgeous as the original theatrical presentations but the film nevertheless looks terrific. Twilight Time has released the movie as a limited edition (3,000 unit) Blu-ray that features some interesting bonus extras. Top of the list is Nick Redman's 2007 feature length documentary Becoming John Ford that traces the mercurial director's long history at Fox and his collaborative productions with studio boss Darryl F. Zanuck. The two would create some great films but ultimately a feud over My Darling Clementine would lead to Ford leaving the studio in 1946. Redman, co-founder of Twilight Time, does a superb job of providing notable talking heads (including Peter Fonda) who provide insightful details on Ford's life and career. Redman also appears on an equally informative commentary track with film historian Julie Kirgo who provides the informative write-ups for the Twilight Time collector's booklets that accompany each release. It's nice to finally hear her speaking directly to viewers and the commentary track is highly entertaining. There is also an original trailer. The only complaint is that the artwork on the sleeve is a bit bland given the star power in the movie. 

In all, another big winner from Twilight Time.

Click here to order from Screen Archives.  

By Bill Duelly 

The Warner Archive Collection has finally released the elusive Liberace feature ‘Sincerely Yours’. Originally released to theaters in 1955, this film is a curio of the times, the studio system and most importantly a snapshot, (in color no less; more on that later) of the early stages of the musician’s career.

To be fair to the movie, we need to turn our mental clocks back to the mid- 50s (so lines such as ‘They’ll love him in San Francisco’ wouldn’t bring immediate chuckles). That upstart- television- had been keeping audiences away from theaters in droves. Various new processes were employed to give audiences an experience they couldn’t get at home, such as Cinemascope and 3-D. So what was one of Warner Brother’s great ideas ? To make a movie with the TV’s first idol, the charming pianist from Wisconsin, Wladziu Valentino Liberace or as he was known professionally, ‘Liberace’. In hindsight, the reasoning was totally illogical and was one of the main reasons for the film’s demise: Liberace was available to TV audiences every day for free, so there was no need to go down to the local theater to pay to see him.

Cynics have long scoffed at the notion of Liberace being presented as a “Ladies Man”. Yet , he never officially came out of the closet and throughout his career, he had plenty of women who swooned at his every appearance. They didn’t seem to care what his sexual preferences were-but Liberace was sensitive to any suggestion that he might not be a full-blooded heterosexual. He even won a famous libel suit against a London critic who dared to suggest otherwise.

For Liberace’s screen debut, Warners dusted off a 1932 property, “The Man Who Played God’, the story of a concert pianist who goes deaf, learns to lip read and then intervenes in the lives of others. The pianist also finds out that the girl he was falling for was herself falling for someone else. Yet all along it was his long suffering secretary who was his real love. Liberace does not set the screen afire as a lead dramatic actor, although the director Gordon Douglas, who seemed to work with everyone in Hollywood, from Laurel & Hardy to Sinatra and Elvis, does a good job in eliciting a fair performance from Lee (as he liked to be called).

One of the popular aspects of Liberace’s TV show was his ability to play to the camera and invite the audience into his world, with his brother George and his mom. Playing the role of a ‘fictional’ performer denied him this resource that worked so well on the small screen. His public appearances, not only relied on his mastery of the keyboard but his charm with the older ladies and frequent interactions with the audience members. And this is where Sincerely Yours really shines, and makes the disc worth every penny. We are treated to numerous concert, dance and nightclub performances, with Liberace charming the audience. The performances are allowed to be worked through and are not rushed or hurried along, so we get to relax and enjoy the music and see the true entertainer that Liberace was during his formative years before the explosion of glitz and glammer of his later Vegas style acts.

Liberace is supported by Joanne Dru as his secretary (unfortunately since finding out she is Peter Marshall’s sister I can’t help thinking Hollywood Squares when she is on); William Demarest, always a delight, plays his manager; Dorothy Malone is his ‘love interest’ and the always dependable LureneTuttle plays one of the beneficiaries of Lee’s goodness.

The DVD release is presented in the correct 16:9 aspect ratio for this movie however the image is a little soft and grainy. In all likelihood this is due to the fact that the film was shot in ‘WarnerColor’, which was just another name for the then new Eastman Color process. The early Eastman color stock was very unstable and had a huge grain structure to it), so don’t expect Technicolor! There are no extras on the disc.

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

Burbank, Calif. June 4, 2013 – Marking the 75^th anniversary of The Wizard of Oz, Warner Bros. has produced a 3D remastered version of the film which will launch a comprehensive, cross-divisional campaign encompassing theatrical, home entertainment, consumer products and a number of promotional partnerships.

Kicking off the celebration, The Wizard of Oz 3D will be presented in the immersive IMAX^® 3D format and return to the big screen for an exclusive one-week engagement in IMAX^® theatres across North America beginning September 20, 2013.

“We couldn’t be happier to partner with IMAX® as we celebrate the 75th anniversary of this iconic film,” said Dan Fellman, President, Domestic Distribution, Warner Bros. Pictures. “The Wizard of Oz IMAX^® 3D Experience is an integral part of our studio-wide anniversary initiative and we are excited to give fans the rare opportunity to see this stunning version on the big screen.”

“The Wizard of Oz is one of the most beloved films of all time and we are thrilled that our longtime partners at Warner Bros. have made IMAX^® a part of this exciting milestone event,” said Greg Foster, Chairman and President of IMAX^® Entertainment. “This film revolutionized the use of color and special effects in cinema, and we’re excited to add another ‘first’ – bringing this timeless classic to moviegoers through the power of The IMAX 3D Experience^® for the very first time.”

The IMAX^® release The Wizard of Oz will be digitally re-mastered into the image and sound quality of The IMAX 3D Experience^® with proprietary IMAX DMR^® (Digital Re-mastering) technology. The crystal-clear images, coupled with IMAX^®'s customized theatre geometry and powerful digital audio, create a unique environment that will make audiences feel as if they are in the movie.

Following the IMAX® theatrical release, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (WBHE) will release a limited and numbered The Wizard of Oz 75^th Anniversary Collector’s Edition on October 1, 2013, featuring the 3D version of the film and more.  

“Seventy-five years later, The Wizard of Oz continues its reign as a multi-generational favorite, with nearly 100 percent awareness among adults and more than 80 percent awareness among children,” said Jeff Baker, WBHE Executive Vice President and General Manager, Theatrical Catalog. “In this new 3D version, the film is bound to make history all over again—with both past and future fans.”

The Wizard of Oz 75^th Anniversary Collector’s Edition will debut as a five-disc set that will include Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, DVD and UltraViolet versions of the film; a new documentary, The Making of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; bonus features and premium collectibles ($105.43 SRP). Three more editions will be available separately: a two-disc 3D/Blu-ray ($35.99 SRP), a one-disc Blu-ray ($19.98 SRP) and a two-disc DVD ($16.95 SRP). All four will contain the new documentary and extra content.

SPECIAL FEATURES will include all previously released special features along with:

• ALL-NEW Documentary! The Making of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz—This candid overview of how a troubled production overcame the odds to become an integral part of American culture features contributions from historians John Fricke and Sam Wasson, composers Stephen Schwartz and Marc Shaiman, critics Leonard Maltin and Michael Sragow, Bert Lahr’s son John as well as revealing interview clips with Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Buddy Ebsen, Margaret Hamilton and Mervyn LeRoy, among others.

• NEW! Exclusive Collectible Memorabilia —A collectible 75^th Anniversary journal; Sparkle RUBY SLIPPERSâ„¢ Globe; Noble Collection 3-piece enamel pin set, a Map of Oz and a 48-page hardcover book. Collection is limited and numbered.

The 3D conversion was a long and complex project which Warner Bros. initiated with a very high resolution (8k) scanning of the original Technicolor camera negative. The restored 2D image was then transformed by creating a depth-map of each frame to construct 3D imagery and determine distances from the viewer’s vantage point. This was followed by the long process (with the use of a rotoscope) to further refine viewer distances and fully layer shapes and objects.

“People have asked for years about The Wizard of Oz 3D conversion. My answer was always, ‘We’re not doing it until it’s perfect.’ And now it is,” said Ned Price, Warner Technical Operations’ Vice President of Mastering. “As a kid, I was so enthralled by this film. Watching it, you just want to enter the frame, enter the Land of Oz. This new version will allow you to do just that.”

In support of the 75^th anniversary of the film, Warner Bros. Consumer Products’ extensive licensing program of more than 80 top-tier licensees will expand with new partnerships. Leading the way is master toy partner Jazwares, along with Mattel, Rubies, Lionel, Steiff, USAopoly, Thomas Kinkade, and many more that will be taking part in the celebration. Special commemorative anniversary product will be available across a wide array of categories including apparel, jewelry, collectibles, publishing, stationery and paper goods, toys and games, slot machines and personal care.

In addition, the Warner Bros. releases will be massively supported by a far-reaching promotional campaign encompassing numerous participants. National corporate partners include (to date) promotional activities with a Major National Quick Serve Restaurant (QSR), the debut of a giant hot-air balloon and balloonhead characters in the 87^th Annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade^®, as well as joint programs with Amtrak, Gourmet Trading Company, Langers Juice, QVC and Simon Malls®. In collaboration with the Ad Council and the National Highway TrafficSafety Administration, new child passenger safety Public Service Announcements (PSAs) featuring iconic elements from The Wizard of Oz film will be distributed and run in donated media nationally.

The Wizard of Oz themed competition will also be featured on an upcoming episode of Food Network’s “Cupcake Wars” to be aired later this year.