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Cult Movie Project #11 (of 200) :: Binging on the Nectar of Gods and Monsters and Those Who Make Them Go: Don Chaffey's Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

May 28, 2015, 9:06 pm
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Sherman? Set The Way-Back Machine for the summer of 1978. The Rivoli Theater. (Or maybe it was The Strand? It doesn't really matter...) Somewhere, as you enter that darkened theater is a seven year old, who had kinda retreated into his own head after his father suddenly died the year prior and his family broke upon the rock of the headstone. He had yet to see Star Wars (1977), which would also blow his mind. But that was still a couple of months away. And so, then ... Well, now, then, he was kinda lost. 



He was there with some school friends for a screening of some old flick about ancient history and monsters; a re-release, and the bombastic commercials for which seen on the old family wood-grained Zenith looked cool as hell. Here, then, now, he sits and watches. A little trepidatious, perhaps, as Bernard Hermann's opening score pounds him into his seat, and some poor maiden is stabbed to death by the bad guy. (This kind of own-mortality reminder plague him constantly, and keeps him awake most nights.) There's a lot of mayhem, and some Greek gods bickering and playing an ersatz game of Risk, screwing with our hero. Intriguing yes, but where were those monsters? 



And then it happens. Talos, the iron giant, who moves with the spine-tweaking sound of rending metal; winged harpies, ripping the clothes off some beggar; a giant mer-man, his tail impatiently slapping at the water as he holds back an avalanche of rocks, allowing the mighty Argo to sail under his armpit. (A joke about underarm stink zings through one ear and out the other. He is smiling, but not because of the joke.) 



The fight with the Hydra ends too quickly, he thinks, but that was just the pregame warm-up for what happens next: when the Children of the Hydra, an army of skeletons, spring forth from the earth and attack. 



And as the movie ended shortly after the battle is won (by default), he doesn't really remember edging to the front of his seat, wanting a closer look at what was happening onscreen. He was well aware of what stop-motion animation was, but he had yet to see it in action like this. (Rankin and Bass Christmas specials and Land of the Lost be damned.) He was boggled. He was mesmerized. And he hadn't thought about death for nearly an hour. The film had drawn him out, and he was hooked. 


Over three decades have passed since that first encounter with Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and the magic of Ray Harryhausen. And though I heartily agree that this was Harryhausen's best film, my favorite will always and forever be The Valley of Gwangi -- I'm telling ya, that dino-rodeo is just as impressive, if not more so, than the climactic skeleton fight found here. 


Older me can grump that Nigel Green's Hercules left the film too early and Nancy Kovack's Madea arrived too late (and too stripped of her sorcery, while we're at it), and actually, as a matter of fact, I already did for those looking for a more in depth look at the film, but I'm still mesmerized with each viewing, joining the echoes of untold thousands of equally enchanted Harryhausen fans, wondering, just, How in the hell does he do that?

Other Points of Interest:





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"For those of us who thrill to fantasy-adventure films in the Thief of Baghdad (1940) tradition, there is no greater treat than the not-frequent-enough release of a new spectacle featuring the special effects of Ray Harryhausen. It is Harryhausen -- not the actors, not the director -- who is the "star" of the pictures with which he is involved: he is the attraction." 

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXxxxxxxxxxXXXXXXX-- Danny Peary  
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The Fine Print: Jason and the Argonauts was watched via  Sony Pictures Home Entertainment  DVD. Watched as a sci-fi/fantasy double-feature with Forbidden Planet (1956). What's the Cult Movie Project? That's eleven down, with 189 to go.  
 

Jason and the Argonauts (1963) Columbia Pictures Corporation / P: Charles H. Schneer / AP: Ray Harryhausen / D: Don Chaffey / W: Jan Read, Beverley Cross, Apollonios Rhodios (poem) / C: Wilkie Cooper / E: Maurice Rootes / M: Bernard Herrmann / S: Todd Armstrong, Nancy Kovack, Gary Raymond, Laurence Naismith, Douglas Wilmer, Nigel Green, Niall MacGinnis, Honor Blackman
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YouTube Finds :: The Devil and George Jefferson: The New Twilight Zone (1985-1989)

June 3, 2015, 12:38 am
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Video courtesy of Ray McDonough.

I clearly remember the roar of approval when Sherman Hemsley pulled his own hash out of the eternal hellfire when he out-witted a Ron Glass-fueled demon the first time I watched I of Newton. (Loved the ever-evolving T-shirt.)  I have many fond memories of episodic TV like this in the 1980s, but am generally confused by their source. Never sure if they were a new Zone, a new Alfred Hitchcock Presents, a Tales from the Darkside, a Ray Bradbury Theater, a Darkroom, an Amazing Stories, or, yes, even an episode of Monsters, most of which are floating around on YouTube, just begging to be tracked down, watched, and collated -- and I'm just the guy to do it. CANNONBALL!


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On the Big Screen :: A Trio of Recent Fright Flicks that I Saw and Finally Got Around to Writing Up.

June 4, 2015, 4:37 pm
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I saw Poltergeist (2015) in a near empty theater with four different knots of teenage girls who were primed and ready to scream. So it was a small but a good, lively crowd; too bad there was nothing really to scream at.  




Still, this remake wasn't that terrible. And despite the fresh angle of a family in a terminal financial crisis relocating to a new house due to the Great Recession, it felt really by the numbers, plot-wise, as you could almost hear someone scratching a check-mark for each nod and rehash of the original that was quickly airbrushed over by a tweak that, alas, worked more not than often; and it seemed the faster they could check things off the better. In fact, the whole film felt like it was in a hurry for no appreciable reason. It was also plagued by a ton of sloppy edits that weren't helping the cause. Also, SQUIRREL!


And as my friend Tim Gerlomi so rightfully pointed out, static shocks aside, the film was sorely missing the establishing scenes of the family playing with the strangeness in Spielbergian wonder before Hooper brings the hammer of annihilation down on them. The cast almost elevates things up a notch, but I think it would've been better to focus on the ghost-hunting team of Jarred Harris and Jane Adams instead of the family -- the elder sister needed about three more rewrites, and Sam Rockwell appears to be sleepwalking through the whole thing, which was a huge disappointment. 




One of the smartest things the original Poltergeist (1982) did was shuttle off the kids once the ectoplasm hits the fan. That is not the case here, as the telegraphed climax is about the scaredy-cat brother finally getting over the bump-in-the-night hump. Also of note, I'm not sure if filmmakers are finally learning how to use 3-D properly or the local theater finally has the projector in focus but that was two topographical films in a row (this and Fury Road) that worked the process really well. The F/X were top-notch, but they were doled out very frugally, as if they were waiting for something big that never really came.


So, yeah, not that great, not that terrible, and totally unwarranted; and so, a hearty I'd wait for rental to all my fellow ghostbreakers out there. Next up...


On the one year anniversary of Laura Barns' (Heather Sossaman) very public suicide -- a very public suicide that will live forever thanks to a smart-phone video, six of her friends log-in for a Skype chat, which quickly devolves into mayhem and mass murder when an anonymous user hacks into their conversation.




Thus, the stage is set for Unfriended (2014), which is less of a found footage, after the fact reconstruction, but a real-time exercise in suspense. The entire film is told through the laptop screen of Blair Lilly (Shelley Hennig), the late Laura's best friend. And as the terrorizing hacker slowly but surely winds everyone up, revealing (not so) hidden online secrets, turning all the participants against one another, its revealed that Laura committed suicide after a brutal smear and shaming campaign after someone posted an anonymous video of her completely wasted at a party -- and so intoxicated on alcohol and Rohypnol, she passes out in a pool of her own vomit, soiling herself in the process. And for the killing to stop, all the ever-dwindling knot of cybernauts must do is reveal who shot and posted the "Leaky Laura" viral video.




Originally, the killer was supposed to be someone seeking vengeance for Laura but I think the filmmakers made the right decision to go the supernatural route and make it a vengeful spirit, solving several logistical and logical problems -- like simply logging off. (Though the borderline parasitic relationship we have with our tech makes one wonder if it really would be that simple. I mean, Click to find out what happens next, amIright?) 




This film wasn't as terrible as I thought it would be, judging by the trailer. I'd even almost tag it as pretty good. Almost, but not quite. I find it odd that they went for an R-rating (which is unjustified), as this subject matter and approach seems tailor made for a PG-13 crowd. 




Kudos to Leo Gabriadze for pulling off the online gimmick. (And how the hell they ever cleared the use of Facebook, Skype, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube is beyond me.) The execution is quite brilliant, I just wish all the effort wasn't wasted on a rote plot of horrible people doing despicable things to each other -- well, in this case, themselves, thanks to the buffer of online anonymity. (Our 'final girl' isn't what we expected, nor the original victim.) 


Thus, the true horror of Unfriended is not the bloodshed but the behavior of these selfish, amoral and desensitized turd-nuggets, which earns them a harsh lesson on the consequences of one's own actions. And then...


I had to drive 160 miles, round-trip, to catch this. And what this all boils down to, kids, is David Robert Mitchell's loving tribute to John Carpenter (especially the industrial synthesizer soundtrack), Dean Cundey, and a vintage STD hygiene film. Moody and highly atmospheric, I'll give them that, but It Follows (2014) kinda forgot to be scary. And yet...



It didn't really need to be. At least the kind of scary your thinking of. No. This film was aiming for something a little higher than that. The trailer already gave away the plot, but, to sum up, basically, our heroine has sex with some jerk and now a malignant supernatural chameleon is out to get her and everyone in the chain who transmitted whatever the hell that thing is from one sex partner to the other, starting with the latest casualty (Maika Monroe), and then working its way back to patient zero. And when I say 'get', I mean turn them into a bloody pretzel.
 


There is no apparent cure for this. You can't reason with it. You can run but you can't hide or get away from it. And it can look like anyone. All you can do to keep from dying is to spread the 'curse' even further, and hope whoever you gave it to spreads it around even more, to give yourself some breathing room.



From there, a knot of friends do their best to help delay the inevitable by staying one step ahead of the relentless entity that only those who are infected can see. I really liked how we're not sure when this is happening -- with the vintage clothes and furnishings, a mix of new and older cars, no cell phones (except for the first victim), and that funky kindle, like we're devolving -- or slouching back to the 1980s. Suburban decay is also huge motif in this flick, as well -- the city is already dead, the rest is witheringly on its way, leaving a demilitarized husk to wander through.



The film that plays out in these surroundings is very deliberate, patient, and requires you to pay attention, ratcheting the tension up several notches if you, like the protagonist, keep your eyes open. (That set-up for the attack on the beach was ah-mazing.) And as it progresses the film raises more questions than offering any answers -- though I found the lack of finding a convenient 'expert' to explain it all away and how to stop the entity kinda refreshing. The nominal hero has seen one too many 1950s era creature features and just wings it from there.



A couple of twists and turns are kind of ambiguous as to what really happened and how far our heroine will go, and went, putting other people in jeopardy, to save herself, makingIt Follows kinda frustrating as it played out and then ends rather abruptly.   



But having an 80 mile drive to stew on what happened and what Mitchell probably intended with that ending (eventually) put this one in the win column for me. To say why would spoil too much. I liked this enough initially -- but It Follows keeps getting better and better the more I think about it.

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Cult Movie Project #12 (of 200) :: Attention: Something's Wrong on Altair-4 and It Doesn't Quite Compute in Fred Wilcox's Forbidden Planet (1956).

June 8, 2015, 12:10 am
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From concept to execution, I freely admit Forbidden Planet (1956) was a little over my head when first encountered on VHS tape back in junior high (-- though it might've been on one of those LP-sized laser discs, if faulty memory serves). I hadn't been introduced to Shakespeare yet, and was just as unfamiliar with the theories of Sigmund Freud. Still, the robot was cool -- hell, it even belched!, the electronica soundtrack all kinds of eerie, and the monster (and the mystery around it) was super-creepy and its brutal assault on the crew of the C-57D left a lasting favorable impression; even though 11-year old me felt it was a little corny and the film squandered too much time on all that "mush" between Commander Adams (Neilson) and Alta (Francis); and, man, that Dr. Morbius (Pidgeon) sure liked to hear himself regurgitate a metric-ton of sci-babble, didn't he?


Yeah. I was/am/and ever shall be a huge fan of sci-fi flicks from the 1950s but usually gravitated more toward the high-octane and hair-brained and cheaper product churned out by American International and Allied Artists or other independents rather than this seemingly stodgy and sanitized first shot at genre legitimacy, courtesy of a grandaddy studio like MGM.


The film began as a treatment by Irving Block and Allen Adler called Fatal Planet, a re-imagining of The Tempest with a healthy sprinkling of psycho-analysis to give it some pep, which begins in the far flung future of 1976, when an expeditionary force is sent to Mercury to retrieve a scientist and his daughter, who have been marooned there for over two decades, currently being stalked by an invisible monster. When Allied Artists rejected it, Block took a shot and pitched it to Dore Schary at MGM (-- which hadn't produced a this kind of F/X-laden film since The Wizard of Oz (1939)), who, serendipitously enough, was looking for a sci-fi property in his efforts to reinvent and reinvigorate the moribund studio.


It should be noted that even though Schary liked the highbrow concept enough to give it a green-light, it was originally budgeted as a B-picture. However, during the pre-production phase the project picked up some much needed steam when art directors Arthur Lonegran and Cedric Gibbons and head F/X-man Arnold Gillespie basically said, screw it, and designed the film how they thought it should be done, budget be damned. Liking what he saw on paper and, perhaps to also answer rival Universal International own mega-budgeted out-of-this-world blowout, This Island Earth (1955), Schary doubled-down on the rechristened Forbidden Planet, raising the budget to over one million dollars, which eventually doubled again before the production was completed.


As we all know a good chunk of that money was spent on one prop, nearly one-quarter of the original budget, but Robby the Robot proved worth it. Designed by Robert Kinoshita and voiced by Marvin Millar, the man-in-the-suit machinations were a closely guarded secret, hoping to sell it as an actual automaton. To realize the deadly Id Monster, the F/X had to be farmed out since MGM's own fabled animation department had been dismantled by 1955. Thus, Schary arranged the loan of Joshua Meador from Walt Disney, who also animated in all the laser beams, landing rays, and other energy discharges (like whenever Robby throws a rod).




Schary also made another fateful decision for Forbidden Planet after he attended the performance of two "avant-garde electronic musicians" at a nightclub in Greenwich Village, and was so mesmerized by the ethereal and eerie sounds produced by Louis and Bebe Barron that he hired them on the spot to re-score the film, trashing all of David Rose's original music except for the main title theme. Receiving a work-print of the film, the Barrons spent nearly three months in their home studio, creating all the "tonalities" for the film, including the Id Monster's signature roar.


As the release date loomed, an incomplete rough cut of the film was previewed and the audience reaction was so favorable Schary, feeling the heat from the studio brass, spent no more money and ordered the film to be released as is. Alas, audiences back in 1956 agreed with my initial assessment. And while the film didn't exactly tank at the box-office it failed to make back its production costs, making it another in a long string of flops for MGM, which, according to most sources, also cost Schary his job, who was ousted from the studio shortly after. Released the year before, This Island Earth also failed to meet box-office expectations, thus, these two massive swings and misses essentially relegated this kind of genre picture back to the B-unit minor leagues, where it languished until Kubrick's 2001: A Space Oddysey (1968) showed its viability as a big-ticket item, launching a decade long surge that culminated in 1977 with the blockbuster release of Star Wars and things have never been the same since.


I saw Star Wars (and The Empire Strikes Back (1980)) before I saw Forbidden Planet, which also might explain my initial cool reaction to it. However, as I've gotten older, I've aged into this flick considerably and appreciate it as a true classic of the era. What I used to find wasteful I now find endearing. And the Shakespearean nod on the plot and the Freudian twist on the monster are kinda trippy. The film still has some glaring faults, though; namely the ending, when Alta chooses Adams over her father, which felt a little trite and truncated; and the ultimate climax really needed to show the Id monster and Morbius finally coming to (fatal) terms with each other. Also, when you have the world's coolest cinematic robot, why waste him as the odious comedy relief? And you spent all that money realizing Altair-4, how come we only get to see so very little of it?


Perhaps Schary's biggest mistake was that even though Forbidden Planet has the sheen of an A-picture, it was still shot and executed like a B. Perhaps some of that expanded budget should've been leeched away from the production design and F/X and spread around on an upgrade behind the camera (director Fred Wilcox biggest films to date were two Lassie sequels) and aim a little higher on the cast, who are all perfunctory enough, to inject some more life into it. (Aside from Walter Pidgeon, the cast was filled out from the lower end of the MGM stable. And, holy Krell crap, does Francis look smashing in those myriad outfits, too bad her role is strictly eye-candy.)


Think how good the film is during the (all too few) action set-pieces, or the exploration of the mammoth underground Krell laboratory and reactor and power plant, and how much it drags everywhere else.




Still, the film does look fantastic -- especially on BluRay and a TV big enough to appreciate the true impact of the Eastman Color and CinemaScope and the work that was put in behind the scenes to make this flick click and stick. And as this cinematic equation reaches a solution, the pluses are just enough to negate the minuses. Add it all up and you got a flawed film I used to like but now legitimately love and champion. 

Other Points of Interest:



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"While there are marvelous things about Forbidden Planet -- the electronic music, special effects (including the Id Monster and Robby the Robot), and scenic design -- they are all of a cosmetic nature ... In my opinion, there are numerous science fiction films that are more intelligent, clever, suspenseful, economical, witty ... you name it. But while I consider Forbidden Planet to be grossly overrated, I do not underestimate the film's importance to its genre. A seminal work, the only [sci-fi] movie of the fifties to succeed in giving the [sci-fi] genre a long-denied tag of respectability."

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The Fine Print: Forbidden Planet was watched via Warner Home Video's Special Edition BluRay. Screened as a sci-fi/fantasy double-feature with Jason and the Argonauts (1963). What's the Cult Movie Project? That's twelve down, with 188 to go.


Forbidden Planet (1956) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) / P: Nicholas Nayfack / D: Fred M. Wilcox / W: Cyril Hume, Irving Block, Allen Adler, William Shakespeare (play) / C: George J. Folsey / E: Ferris Webster / M: Bebe Barron, Louis Barron / S: Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, Leslie Nielsen, Warren Stevens, Jack Kelly, Earl Holliman, Robby the Robot
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June Bugs :: Adjust Your Antennae for the Greatest Big Bug Movie of All Time! A Horror Horde of Crawl 'n' Crush Giants in Gordon Douglas' THEM! (1954)

June 10, 2015, 2:28 am
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"Well, Old Man Johnson could've died in any one of five ways: His neck and back were broken; his chest was crushed; his skull was fractured ... And here's one for Sherlock Holmes -- there was enough formic acid in him to kill twenty men."
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Today's film is a thrilling police procedural mystery with a stylish noir flair. It also has solid action, a fine sense of comedic timing, and rousing combat sequences. And when you combine all of that with a great cast, outstanding special-effects, and some startling imagery, you got yourself a very entertaining film -- a very entertaining film that also just happens to be about giant ants.


 
It begins when a little girl is found wandering around the New Mexico desert alone, dazed and dirty, locked in a silent state of shock. The local Highway Patrol, led by Sgt. Ben Peterson (Whitmore), retrace her steps back to a destroyed campsite but find no sign of her parents in the wreckage. And as more and more people turn up missing or dead under violent circumstances, with the only linking clue being an odd animal footprint, the FBI is brought in in the form of Special Agent Robert Graham (Arness) to help jump-start the stalled investigation.


Since the locals can't identify the mystery print, Graham forwards it on to Washington for further analysis, and is a little baffled when his bosses answer by dispatching two experts on insects. Confusion reigns as the Doctors Medford, a father-daughter outfit (Weldon and the irascible Gwenn), won't elaborate on their findings and stubbornly refuse to comment further until they find some collaborating evidence. First stop is a visit to the local hospital to check up on the little girl (Descher). And when the elder Medford waves a glass of formic acid in front of the nearly catatonic waif, the fumes trigger one of the greatest and most effective screams in B-Movie history that rockets right up your spine and rattles your brain as it resoundingly resonates and puckers your rear end in anticipation for what's to follow.




As tension continues to mount, the Medfords continue to play it close to the vest and refuse to explain the girl's violent reaction and, instead, fearing it may already be too late, insist on a trip to the area where the girl was initially found, near the atomic testing sites at White Sands -- he typed ominously.


So into the desert they go, and though a nasty sandstorm is brewing and threatening to break wide-open, they manage to find another print. Splitting up to hopefully find more, and perhaps a trail, the younger Medford wanders off by herself, and as she tries to make out a strange, piercing screech over the howling wind, a 15-foot piece of six-legged concrete proof lumbers over a nearby sand dune, confirming their worst nightmare...


While THEM! was in pre-production, the studio execs at Warner Bros. kept the whole thing under wraps and only those directly involved knew what it was about. Hoping to combine and cash-in on the successful elements of House of Wax and The Beast from 20000 Fathoms, two of their biggest money-makers from 1953, the studio had big plans, high ambitions, and elaborate F/X budgeted for the production that was slated to be shot in Warnercolor and in 3-D. But at some point, and for some undisclosed reason, the studio lost all faith in the film, resulting in a slashed budget, black and white film stock, and a return to two-dimensions. And then there's the apocryphal story where the finished, stream-lined film was screened for Jack Warner, who was apparently not amused by what he saw and offered that anybody else wanting to make asinine giant bug movies would be banished to Republic Pictures.


With that, and without much fanfare, THEM! was quietly released in June of 1954 and proceeded to stick its ejaculatory duct into Jack Warner's ear, trailing only the likes of A Star is Born and The High and the Mighty in box-office receipts -- and for good reasons, too.


What makes this movie work in spite of it's inherently wonky premise is that everyone involved took it very seriously. Starting with the cast, Whitmore and Arness have good chemistry (-- though Whitmore had to wear four-inch lifts to better sync up with his co-star, who was a full foot taller), while Weldon does well as the feisty, no-nonsense heroine, helped by a script that leaves the idiotic romantic subplot on the back-burner until the film's very last scene. But it's Gwenn who steals the show as the fuddy, radio-impaired crackpot. Seriously, you don't want any of these people to become ant-kibble, which is why -- Spoilers Ahoy! -- Whitmore's Wilhelm-fueled heroic death at the end has such an impact.


Combine all that with another solid effort from journeyman director, Gordon Douglas, whose been rightfully gaining some traction lately for an overlooked career that's finally getting its due, and an intelligent and believable script that doesn't get bogged down in the usual sci-babble or stock-footage abuse and stays focused on a methodical mystery that doesn't cheat the audience, is it any wonder why THEM! has earned such a stellar reputation? For even after the discovery and confirmation of the giant ants existence in the opening act, things are just getting warmed up as we switch gears from an investigative effort to an all out search and destroy mission.


See, after dispatching the scout ant before it can turn anybody into a snack, a strict, need-to-know security blanket is thrown over the entire investigation as the army is called in to help find and neutralize the atomically-mutated ant colony. And despite some radio protocol gaffes, find the nest they do; the entrance littered with the bones of all those missing persons. But once more Dr. Medford blocks any attempt to blow the nest to smithereens, and is very coy as to the reasons why until the elderly scientist explains they must be certain that the nest is an isolated anomaly. And to do that, they must first make their way into the queen ant's egg chamber to make sure no other queens have hatched out and vacated to start even more colonies. For if they have, Medford warns, and those colonies breed even more colonies, mankind's reign as the dominant species on Earth will be over within a year.



Using phosphorous shells to drive the ants deeper into the nest, followed by a barrage of poisonous gas grenades, once the network of tunnels is thoroughly saturated, Peterson, Graham and the younger Medford descend into the darkness. And after a few surreal and suspenseful turns, navigating through all the carcasses and a few stray live ones, the group finds the egg chamber but they were too late; two queens have managed to hatch out and escape. With that, Medford orders the men to burn all the remaining, and still percolating, larva.



Next, our film switches gears again to a race against the clock as a wide dragnet is thrown out for any reports of strange sightings or phenomenon to try and track down the missing queens. They hit upon some luck when one of them is found aboard a cargo ship at sea -- lucky for everyone except for the poor sailors who are quickly overwhelmed and devoured. And when it is determined that a rescue operation is untenable, the freighter is sunk by Naval gunfire, which leaves only one queen still unaccounted for until a few more clues -- including a large sugar theft, and a bizarre, dismemberment death -- leads them to the sewers beneath Los Angeles. (Originally, it was to be the subways in New York, but was moved to save more money.)


But once again, Medford wants to find the egg chamber. Only this time, they can't use any gas because the dismembered man's two sons are believed to be hiding somewhere in the 700 miles of storm drains underneath the city. And as the media black-out is lifted, the army mobilizes and starts a grid search. Against all hope, Peterson manages to find the boys, alive, and the nest, and though he lifts the survivors to safety, the ants swarm to protect the queen and kill him before he can get away. ((WILHELM!!!))


Arriving too late to save his friend, Graham leads the charge as the ants are beaten back and obliterated in a hail of gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades. Surrounding the nest, they spy three empty shells, but the queens who came out of them are all present and accounted for. With that, the order is given and the ants are showered with napalm, ending the current threat. But who knows what other horrors are currently gestating out in the irradiated desert. For as Dr. Medford laments, "When Man entered the atomic age, he opened a door into a new world. What we'll eventually find in that new world, nobody can predict." 




One of the few things to survive THEM!'s budget purge were the F/X. Here, the giant ants were realized with several life-sized mock-ups that were manipulated with hidden wires and rods that are most effective -- effectively gruesome, when the ants are burned alive. And that's one thing I really, really like about this movie is that the giant ants aren't indestructible and can be taken down with some effort. And though I could have sworn the ant's screech was provided by a loose alternator belt on an old Packard, in truth, it was a chorus of amplified tree frogs.(A couple of years ago while touring the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, I heard their siren call and traced it to a display about the tropical frogs and the button that triggered it, and then spent the next five minutes simulating a giant ant swarm. I'd probably still be there, but there were also otters.) 



Often imitated but never bettered, I think THEM! works, and has withstood the test of time, because of the opening mystery that really hooks you in, and then challenges you to hang on for the resulting chase, and then cheer during the rousing climax -- a good old-fashioned giant bug butt-kicking.



This re-post is part of June Bugs, a whole month long bucket of creepy-crawly reviews courtesy of The Celluloid Zeroes. Be sure to click on over to Cinemasochist Apocalypse, Checkpoint: Telstar, and The Terrible Claw Reviews for more insecticide insanity. Also, be sure to scuttle back here next week as I swing my shoe at another killer-bug flick.


THEM! (1954) Warner Bros. / P: David Weisbart / D: Gordon Douglas / W: Ted Sherdeman, Russell S. Hughes, George Worthing Yates (story) / C: Sid Hickox / E: Thomas Reilly / M: Bronislau Kaper / S: James Arness, James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, Joan Weldon, Onslow Stevens, Sean McClory, Sandy Descher
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June Bugs :: An Uncomfortable Fear of the Known: The King of the B's Flames Out with Jeannot Szwarc's Bug (1975)

June 16, 2015, 12:33 am
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"We live."
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I remember watching Bug (1975) when I was like, eleven or twelve, a movie of the week, and remember it fah-reaking the hell out of me, which had me anxious to give it another spin. I knew I had a copy, somewhere, having bought the DVD when it was released back in 2004 but, turns out, I never even removed the plastic wrap until last night. Guess there was some residual freak-out still lingering. Mebbe. Whatever. Wait. Why is my leg suddenly itching...


Anyways, the film was based on the Thomas Page novel, The Hephaestus Plague (1973), which is set in the fruit and tobacco belt down south. It kicks off with an earthquake that opens up a near bottomless, several-counties long chasm, which disgorges thousands of large, beetle-like insects. Armored like a mini-Sherman tank, making them nearly impossible to squish, and filled with a strange symbiotic bacteria instead of the usual organs, this new breed of pesticide-resistant bug are also equipped with a special set of rear antennae, which when rubbed together, spark like two pieces of flint, burning everything it comes into contact with and reducing everything around them to carbonized ash; the only thing these critters will eat. And so, like a slow but relentless plague of highly flammable locusts, these firebugs start wreaking all kinds of havoc with the local farmers. And once these bugs start hitching a ride on passing automobiles, what was once an isolated problem soon becomes a nationwide epidemic.


Enter entomologist James Parmiter, a pompous unlikeable lout, whose morbid fascination with all things that creep and crawl give him the insight to classify and find the new species of bugs' vulnerabilities, which, in a feat of hubris, he names Hephaestus parmitera, putting himself in the same league as the Greek god of fire. Labeling them as an offshoot of the common cockroach, Parmiter deduces that the reason the bugs are so slow and dense is because they come from deep beneath the Earth's crust, where they were under considerable atmospheric pressure; and now, basically, they're suffering from a case of the bends. Things get a little weird from there as the obsessed Parmiter --- some might even call him... mad -- has no intention of destroying the bug but instead starts to crossbreed them with regular roaches, creating a new strain; a new strain that can communicate with him!


It's been awhile since I'd read Page's novel, as well (-- I vaguely recall reading it not long after I saw the movie, finding one of those "Now a Major Motion-Picture' tie-ins at some broken-spine), and the only thing I really remember about it is the hair-brained efforts to find a natural predator for the firebugs. A tarantula's venom proves worthless and a centipede is no match and quickly shredded, but the one test I recall vividly is the Gila Monster, which ate one of the bugs only to have it burn itself back out through its stomach. The film adaptation alludes to this scene at the beginning, when a family farm-cat has a similar fatal encounter with several of the bugs, the first of many gruesome and prolonged casualties -- especially if you're a feline, or blonde and pretty and female.


After establishing a reputation as the low-rent master of fright, William Castle had unleashed over a decade's worth of gimmick-driven films; and at the zenith of his popularity, the man's personal fan club had nearly a quarter of million card-carrying members. But after introducing the world to Percepto, Illusion-O, Emergo and the Fright Break, the producer / director seemed to achieve a paradigm shift in his career when he secured the rights to Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby, which he leveraged into a deal with Paramount, who would let him produce the film but not direct it. Unfortunately, this shift stalled when bad health kinda derailed things after Rosemary's Baby (1968) proved a box-office bonanza. His next film, Project-X (1968) was a disaster, and his personal art-project, Shanks (1974), which is better than you've heard, failed to find an audience. With Paramount's patience at an end, in an effort to get his groove back, Castle decided to return to his roots and make another horror movie.


The 1970s saw a brief resurgence in "mad science" monster movies. Some were pretty great (Phase IV (1974)), some will surprise you by how good they were (Sssssss (1973)), some were hilarious (Night of the Lepus (1972)), and some were pretty awful (Food of the Gods (1976)), and then there's Bug, which is kind of a combination of all the above.


Again, Castle would only produce Bug, leaving the directing to Jeannot Szwarc, who, for a brief -- and I mean, brief, period of time, was pegged to rival Spielberg as the best of the new young Turks of Hollywood in the 1970s. I've never been a big fan of Szwarc, finding his films flat, lifeless and dull-looking. Perfunctory. I've never seen someone who can make cinema on some of his budgets (Supergirl (1984) and Santa Claus (1985)) look like cash-in made for TV movies. Bug didn't have that kind of money, but the director still managed to pull the effect off. *sigh* In his defense, I guess he was really good at that.


During pre-production, Castle had also wanted to bring back some of his old-school ballyhoo by installing automatic brushes under theater seats that would activate and tickle the audiences' ankles at certain strategic points to induce a case of the heebie-geebies. This was deemed not cost-effective by the studio and nixed. Undaunted, Castle still embarked on a personal cross-country promotional tour with "Hercules", one of the giant cockroaches used in the film, which Castle took out an enormous life insurance policy on.


As for the actual film, aside from moving the action to southern California, they're adaptation doesn't stray too far from the source novel (in fact, Page co-wrote it with Castle), with one notable and sizable exception. Page's Parmiter was a bachelor who had turned his back on humanity long before the earth had broken open and belched-up his new best friends. One could almost consider him a co-conspirator of sorts. Szwarc's Parmiter, played brilliantly by Bradford Dillman, is very different. A little too caught up in his work perhaps, a little too target-fixated, but still a good man trying to solve a potentially epoch-level problem only no one will listen to him or pay attention to his findings. And what I remember most about that initial screening wasn't the killer bugs, but the scientist slowly cracking up and making some horrific decisions; essentially one very sick man dooming humanity by adapting the "Bugs From the Earth's Core" to breathe and breed topside. This is what kept me up that night, not the giant cock-a-roaches. Though they were pretty gross.


It all falls apart for Parmiter when a careless oversight on his part results in the tragic immolation death of his wife (Miles) and the destruction of their home. Sharp eyes will notice the interior is the recycled kitchen, family room and den from the recently cancelled The Brady Bunch. And even not-so-sharp eyes will spot Miles obvious stunt-double.


 Joanna Miles.


 Not Joanna Miles.

After that, he holes up in an isolated farmhouse with a pressurized tank, determined to crack and break the bugs to his will in several scenes that can best be described as insect torture porn. And while his method of cross-breeding a newer and even deadlier strain seems completely illogical to the viewer it's completely logical to him. That's what I mean by scary. And as a third generation of firebugs gestate, and a psychic hive-mind link is established between man and insect, it becomes crystal clear as to who is really controlling who.


Dillman's big break seemed to come early in his career when he played one half of Leopold and Loeb in Compulsion (1959), based on the notorious true-crime case and the resulting trial. But things kinda sputtered from there, which was bad for him but great for schlock cinema fans everywhere because he wound up in things like this, The Swarm (1978), Guyana: Cult of the Damned (1979) and Piranha (1978), adding a metric-ton of gravitas. I have never encountered a more intriguing and pathetic mad scientist than James Parmiter; mostly because his efforts are based on emotional damage instead of the usual narcissism. He truly is insane. And in anyone else's hands, I fear it would've been a disaster.




If you read up on Bug the general consensus is: it's pretty good but drags in the middle. On that I will disagree, because the middle is about 80% wild-eyed and twitchy Dillman taking a long walk off a very short sanity pier and the other 20% is Patty McCormack getting eaten alive. No, where Bug ultimately fails is in the climax, and that's completely due to a grievous misstep by the F/X department.


Up 'til the end, the bugs were played by a succession of real bugs shot with a macro lens to great effect, starting with the 'Blaberus giganteus' a/k/a the Central American giant cave cockroach as the first generation (-- the males look like freakin' trilobites), the Madagascar hissing cockroach as the second, and the Palmetto bug as the last incarnation. Palmetto bugs, of course, can fly, and when they burst out of the chasm, the super-imposition looks a little cheesy but it works. Unfortunately, Dillman has learned too late that he's made a grievous error in judgment (actually about six or seven of them), and is soon swarmed over by a bunch of plastic, off-the-shelf toys that no amount of quick-cut editing will make you ignore the very visible strings they're hanging from, nearly torpedoing all the creepy and icky stuff that had been happening for the previous half-hour.


Others may be more forgiving for such compromises, and they are endearing to a point (and bring to mind the flying cruller monsters from It Conquered the World (1956)). And if this film had been in the same gonzoid vein as, say, Night of the Lepus, it would've been fine and more forgivable -- even applauded, but the film was a little more ambitious than that I fear. And then Bug just kinda ends, with a fire-engulfed Parmiter cannonballing into the chasm, with his "children" swarming in after him, followed by what can only be quantified as a Divinely-timed aftershock that seals the breach before the end credits roll.


Well, crap. Until the last five minutes, Bug was as eerily effective as I remembered -- better than I'd remembered, actually, but is ultimately skewered by this digital age that isn't as forgiving as broadcast TV on a 12-inch screen was way back when. Sadly, this would be Castle's last film. (He died two years later.) And to add insult to injury, Bug had the misfortune of premiering the exact same day as Jaws in 1975, a big-budgeted B-picture that Castle and others of his ilk used to churn out almost weekly from 1955 through 1974 -- in fact I'd argue that Castle had already done this with Rosemary's Baby, and it got killed at the box-office. (Somewhat ironically, Szwarc's next project would be directing the sequel, Jaws 2, which, true to form, looks like a MFTV cash-in of the original.) 


This, is too bad. For even though it tripped over the finish line, I'd still give Bug a hearty recommendation. Watching Dillman work, alone, makes it worth a spin, the firebugs are just set-dressing. Nightmare inducing set-dressings, sure, because, I mean, *bleaugh* AND WHY ARE MY LEGS STILL ITCHING!?!


This post is part of June Bugs, a whole month long bucket of creepy-crawly reviews courtesy of The Celluloid Zeroes. Be sure to click on over to Cinemasochist Apocalypse, Checkpoint: Telstar, and The Terrible Claw Reviews for more insecticide insanity 


Bug (1975) William Castle Productions :: Paramount Pictures / P: William Castle / D: Jeannot Szwarc / W: William Castle, Thomas Page (novel)/ C: Michel Hugo / E: Allan Jacobs / M: Charles Fox / S: Bradford Dillman, Joanna Miles, Richard Gilliland, Jamie Smith-Jackson, Alan Fudge, Jesse Vint, Patty McCormack
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In Memoriam :: Christopher Lee Takes the Devil by the Tail and Sends Him Back to Hell in Terence Fisher's The Devil Rides Out (1968)

June 24, 2015, 8:58 pm
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One of my most favorite characters the late, great Christopher Lee ever played was the famed adventure and occultist, The Duke de Richleau, in The Devil Rides Out / The Devil's Bride (1968). Mined from the same Doc Savage vein, De Richleau was the creation of author Dennis Wheatley, who had him appear in eleven novels starting in 1933 with the last coming nearly forty years later in 1970.


A prolific teller of thrillers, adventure yarns, and piercing the veil of the occult and Satanism, Wheatley rivaled the likes of Edgar Wallace when it came to popularity and sales, becoming one of the world's best selling novelists for a forty year period (1930-1970). (Also of note, Wheatley's novels featuring Gregory Sallust were one of the main inspirations for Ian Fleming's James Bond.) But unlike Wallace, Wheatley didn't really embrace the new medium of movies to adapt his stories for an even broader audience, which was too bad because with the rich characters, intricate plots, international intrigue, and a huge heaping helping of the macabre, they were nearly all tailor made for the motion pictures.


Wheatley's first novel, The Forbidden Territory (1933), starred de Richleau and his merry band of muckrakers, which the author dubbed the "Modern Musketeers": young upstart Simon Aron; American aviator and athlete, Rex Van Ryn; and publisher and professional skeptic, Richard Eaton, and his wife, Marie-Lou. And while their first case was more straight-up adventure and daring-do, for the second Wheatley wanted to up the stakes and set our heroes against the forces of paganism and Black Magic. (In fact, Wheatley would have all of his adventurers encounter some form of the supernatural at least once.) And while he was already familiar with ancient religions, Wheatley wanted something more contemporary, seeking out information and input from the likes of Aleister Crowley (thee noted occultist of the era), the Reverend Montague Summers (who believed in werewolves, vampires and witches), and Rollo Ahmed (an expert on demonology and native rituals from many cultures).


Thus, Wheatley got the band back together for The Devil Rides Out (1934), where de Richleau and Van Ryn discover their friend Aron has come under the thrall of Damien Mocata and his cult of devil-worshipers. Further investigation unravels that Aron is instrumental in Mocata's plan to ignite the hidden power of the Talisman of Set, which gives whoever possesses it the ability to summon and control the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.


With the fate of the world and their friend's soul on the line, then, an eldritch game of cat and mouse ensues as Aron is rescued, recaptured, and then rescued again after a daring night raid against the Devil himself breaks up a Black Mass, thwarting Mocata at least temporarily. Seeking refuge at the Eaton estate, the five reunited musketeers spend a night of terror, ensconced inside the apparent safety of a protective mystical circle de Richleau drew on the floor to repel Mocata's repeated attacks to lure them out and kill them.


Defeated on that front, Mocata switches targets and kidnaps the Eaton's daughter, replacing Aron as the ritual sacrifice needed to trigger the end of the world. And while the men are easily defeated by Mocata's own magic, Marie-Lou recalls the right incantation in the nick of time, invoking the Lord of Light, who possesses her daughter and pulls Mocata into the astral plane for the final battle royale, where his own demons are turned against Mocata and kill him.


From the very beginning, Hammer Films was interested in adapting the works of Wheatley. But even after their Gothic horror revival of blood and boobs hit big in the late 1950s (and kept on keeping on into the 1960s) the studio was stymied on two points: One, Wheatley's agents were asking for the moon and then some for the film rights; and two, founders William Hinds and James Carreras felt they would never get the gist of Wheatley's stories -- Satanism, orgies, and human sacrifices -- past the censors. And considering all the trouble they had with their aborted adaptation of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (another tale for another review), these concerns were totally justified.


But it was Christopher Lee who finally got the ball rolling, reaching out to the author, himself. Lee, who was keen on playing de Richleau, was also a neighbor of Wheatley's and, negotiating over several glasses of wine, got the author's personal permission to film The Devil Rides Out, untangling several legal and logistical knots; and so, Hammer put it and another Wheatley tale, The Uncharted Seas, filmed and released as The Lost Continent, on the slate for a 1968 release. And, irony of ironies, the eventually finished film breezed through the censors with nary a hiccup.


Hinds initially commissioned a script from John Hunter, who had written the excellent psychological thriller on the horrors of pedophilia, Never Take Sweets from a Stranger (1960), but it didn't pass muster. Hinds then turned it over to Matheson to see what he could do with it. Again, Matheson had had a working relationship with Hammer ever since the I Am Legend fiasco, and had since written Fanatic a/k/a Die! Die! My Darling! (1965) for them; a terrific hagsploitation classic starring Tallulah Bankhead and Stefanie Powers. Matheson stayed fairly true to the novel, keeping it set in England in the 1930s, but with one glaring exception: there is no mention of the Talisman of Set, leaving the reason for Mocata's obsession with Aron and the girl, Tanith, up in the air, making it very confusing for those unfamiliar with the source novel. This, I feel, was a huge tactical mistake.



With the script set, Hammer regular Anthony Nelson Keys was tapped to produce, who basically used the same crew from the previous year's Quatermass and the Pit a/k/a Five Million Years to Earth (1967); and to direct, the studio brought out its big gun: Terence Fisher (The Curse of Frankenstein, Horror of Dracula, The Mummy, The Curse of the Werewolf. Pictured above with Lee).


Lee, of course, anchors the film as our arcane protagonist but he is equally matched by Charles Gray as the villainous (and very dapper) Mocata. One of the film's few flaws is that these two never really have a direct confrontation. I also love Sarah Lawson and Paul Eddington as the fighting Eatons, and Nike Arrighi as Mocota's seemingly doomed dupe, Tanith. Leon Greene is fine as Rex  the square-jaw, but Patrick Mower's Aron is total wash.


The film also showcases a couple of outstanding set-pieces. The first was the Black Mass and summoning of the Goat of Mendes. The suit concocted by Roy Ashton and worn by stuntman Eddie Powell is effectively creepy and unsettling. The second was Mocata's attack on the Eaton Estate. The earlier scene where he mesmerizes Marie is top-notch and the later attack is set-up to be something truly special but, alas, it kinda fizzles. The superimposed tarantula that stalks around the magic circle works well enough. Honest. Where it truly falls apart is the appearance of the Angel of Death. And for a studio that produced those creepy-as-hell ghost horses and riders for Night Creatures (1962), well, we know they can do better than taping plastic bat-wings to a horse.



And that really is the film's main flaw, and it's nearly fatal, is that despite all of de Richleau's hand-wringing and bombastic doomsaying, Mocata, his minions, and his plan are short-circuited and thwarted a little too easily. (One has to wonder if the "Divine intervention" at the end was a bone thrown to the censors.) The fact that we're never really clued into his true motivation didn't help matters any. And to me, the final confrontation that turns on Marie's sudden possession by the spirit of Tanith doesn't make a whole lot of sense -- nor the tacked on time-warp happy ending.


When the film was finished, Hinds nearly passed out after watching a rough-cut, feeling it didn't work. At all. Luckily, with some fine-tuning and James Bernard's score to glue it all together the film proved a moderately successful hit on both sides of the pond. (By all accounts, Wheatley absolutely loved it.) When it was imported to the States, fearing the original title would bring in people looking for another spaghetti western, Fox changed the title to The Devil's Bride. Whichever title, it didn't help matters that it was released the same year as Rosemary's Baby and Night of the Living Dead, making it look even more quaint and outdated than it actually was.



Still, I like this movie a lot. Again, it's one of my favorite performances by Lee in a rare instance where he gets to be the good guy. And ever since I first saw it, I've always viewed de Richleau as an ersatz Dr. Strange -- the Master of Mystic Arts. And somewhere, out there, is an alternate universe where Hammer took a gamble in the 1970s and adapted a movie -- or better yet, a TV series, where Lee played Stephen Strange in The Defenders, which hewed more closely to Julian Wintle's The Avengers than Lee and Kirby's Avengers, where the Sorcerer Supreme teamed up with fellow agents Robert "The Bruce" Banner (Nigel Green), a/k/a The Hulk; Namor McKenzie (Doug McClure), a/k/a the Sub-Mariner; Barbara Norris (Ingrid Pitt), a/k/a the Valkyrie; Patricia Walker (Caroline Munro) a/k/a the Hellcat; and Norrin Radd (Donald Pleasance), a/k/a the Silver Surfer to take on otherworldly things that went bump in the night. How awesome would that've been? I've actually got several faux dossiers on these characters cobbled together that I might publish here someday. Until then, Boils and Ghouls, raise your glass and bow your heads, for a legend has passed.


Sir Christopher Lee
(1922-2015)

This post is part of The Celluloid Zeroes posthumous celebration of the awesome and then some career of Christopher Lee. The tribute continues at Cinemasochist Apocalypse, Checkpoint: Telstar, and The Terrible Claw Reviews.


The Devil Rides Out / The Devil's Bride (1968) Associated British-Pathé :: Hammer Film Productions :: Seven Arts Pictures :: 20th Century Fox Film Corporation / P: Anthony Nelson Keys / D: Terence Fisher / W: Richard Matheson, Dennis Wheatley (novel) / C: Arthur Grant / E: Spencer Reeve / M: James Bernard / S: Christopher Lee, Charles Gray, Nike Arrighi, Leon Greene, Patrick Mower, Sarah Lawson, Paul Eddington, Rosalyn Landor
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Blogathon Alert :: Keep Watching the Skies!

April 16, 2015, 10:07 pm
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Listen up, Boils and Ghouls!

Once again the fine folks at Ferdy on Films, This Island Rod and Wonders in the Dark are hosting another For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon to raise money to help preserve our film heritage for future generations. This year’s theme is Sci-Fi, HOORAY! Thus and so, the Brewery is giddily answering the call to participate. And what will I be putting under the microscope? Oh, just this little nugget of the awesome:


It's better than you'd think. Honest. Well, sort of.


I'm participating. Are you?
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Favorites :: Inks and Paints :: Dial "S" for the Subs, Then "D" for Disaster :: Best Birthday Ever!

June 28, 2015, 12:31 pm
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Once again artist Tom Fowler perfectly captures the disaster-prone essence of The Legion of Substitute Heroes. I have always held a deep affection for the 'Never say die' attitude of the Subs, who, despite a colossal amount of collateral damage, most of it self-inflicted, have managed to save the Legion's hash on several occasions and, here, the artist has once more captured that gung-ho espirit de corps quite beautifully. For more of Fowler's wonderful work, follow the link to his website.
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Cult Movie Project #13 (of 200) :: Finding the Missing Link Between the Old and the New in Anthony Mann's Man of the West (1958)

June 29, 2015, 12:29 am
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As the 1950s progressed and the proliferation of television had studios cutting their B-Units to offset the loss of plunging ticket sales, the Western kinda dried up, leaving the genre a parched tumbleweed of its former self. But, irony of irony, when they started flourishing and became the dominant force on TV, studios started warming up to them again, giving them bigger budgets, adult themes, and a sense of spectacle that you couldn't get on the boob-tube, promoting the Western to, essentially, A-Picture status.


Now, before Sergio Leone and the Italians really blew things up in the 1960s, American westerns were already re-envisioning themselves thanks to the efforts of folks like Andre de Toth and Budd Boetticher (both working with a revitalized Randolph Scott), Jack Arnold (known mostly for his creature features but he made some excellent westerns with Audie Murphy, too,) and, especially, Anthony Mann. In fact, I'll argue with anyone that Leone borrowed liberally from all those mentioned above for his famous Spaghetti Westerns.


For his part Mann brought a stark and brutal film noir flavor to his westerns, and sucked all the romanticism out of the stock characters, situations and landscapes. The heroes were flawed, the villains irredeemably vile, and the heroines were a different kind of damaged goods. And together with star Jimmy Stewart, Mann blazed a trail of box-office hits, beginning with the excellent Winchester '73 (1950) and ended with The Man from Laramie (1955).


One of cinema's great mysteries is the exact reason why Mann and Stewart split-ways (politics most likely), but this rift found Gary Cooper in the starring void in Man of the West (1956), perhaps Mann's most destructive deconstructive western yet. I've always found Cooper to be a bit of an eccentric as an actor, but all of his tics and quirks fit reformed outlaw Link Jones to a tee. Unlike Stewart's characters, who were extremely volatile and extroverted and prone to manic outbursts, Cooper's lone character is introverted and extremely guarded. But what appears to be a bumbling imbecile on the surface is in truth the exact same pressure-cooker with a defective release valve.


And the plot he's plugged into is fairly similar to Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992). Here, bad luck pulls Link back into his old destructive life when a botched train robbery leaves him and two con-artists (O'Connell and London) stranded in the middle of the prairie. Familiar with the area, Link leads them to an old abandoned hideout for shelter only to find it occupied by his old gang, led by the completely psychotic uncle, Doc Tobin (Cobb), who both raised and raised hell with Link before his prodigy got fed up with all the killing, disappeared, and went straight.



And while the other members of the gang don't trust him, Doc tries to bring Link back into the fold for their next big score. Link plays along to protect his two companions as best he can. But things get a little dicey from there with two tough scenes where one outlaw (Lord) forces the girl into a striptease, and then later, Link forces him to do the same after beating the crap out of him. Lord's wounded, humiliated screams as Link tears his clothes off is both deserved and downright disturbing.




This all inevitably leads to a final showdown, and a very disheartening rape, where Link must re-embrace his old ways to both survive and take revenge for the suffering innocents caught up in Tobin's delusional plan of trying to recapture his old thunder. (The big heist is nothing more than an abandoned ghost town.) Needless to say, it is quite spectacular.


The first time I watched Man of the West I'm kinda ashamed to admit that it took me almost half the movie to finally recognize nurse Dixie McCall from TV's Emergency. Born Gayle Peck in Santa Rosa, California, as the legend goes Julie London was discovered by an agent while working as an elevator operator, officially launching her music career and triggering a meteoric rise in the late 1950s that she managed to sustain for the next three decades and 32 albums. Intoning the same kind of sultry and sensual tones as Keely Smith, London also brought a breezy, preternatural intimacy to her songs that just melted your brain like hot caramel over ice cream. (Just listen to her cover of "One for My Baby" if you don't believe me.) Along the way she married and (amicably) divorced fellow jazz-enthusiast Jack Webb, and then married musician (and collaborator and future co-star) Bobby Troup.


And while rightfully known for her music and small screen career, London did make a few appearances on the big screen; but none had more impact than her work as Billie Ellis in Man of the West. Her character goes through all kinds of hell and her relationship with Link is lot more complex than one usually finds in a traditional oater. Before, any dastardly doing to any female was told through the prism of the hero and how it affected them, not the victim herself. Billie is raped by Tobin as a way to get at Link, but Link, while enraged over this, knows she was violated, not him. And rarest of all, Billie, no saint to begin with, and now a rape victim, damaged goods to the civilized world and beyond redemption, manages to survive without being "morally" put down for her sins. She loves Link, but he's already married and lets her down gently. And together, these two ride off into the sunset, bent and twisted but still unbroken.


Between Ellis' pleading, Beasley's grovelling, Tobin's ranting, Coaley's screeching, and Trout's murder of the terrified peasant woman followed by his own howling death, this film tends to haunt the viewer. And yet even though Mann's version of the west is bleak and unforgiving, there is some hope for law and order in Man of the West; as it's clear the time of outlaws like Tobin and his goons is waning, pushed deeper into the rapidly disappearing wilderness or brought to justice by men forged over the same furnace like Link. For in the end, no matter who you are or who you were, there's a choice to be made. One of the answers is right. The other wrong. And the space in-between is kinda blurry.


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"One of cinema's harshest portrayals of the west, [Man of the West] contains psychotic killers who are total opposites of the romanticized bad men of countless other westerns, a morally ambiguous hero who yields to his long-held-in-check violent nature in order to do in his brutal kin, and a very liberal dose of sex, an ingredient never found in a television western ... Mann typically sets his final gun battles far away from civilization, off in the wilderness, away from all eyes, where both men can fight as unfairly as possible to win -- life and death battles need not be fairly fought ... As is true of many of Mann's heroes, when Link kills his counterpart, he destroys a part of himself. In Mann's films, killing someone is difficult and not to be taken lightly.
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The Fine Print: Man of the West was watched via MGM's DVD. What's the Cult Movie Project? That's 13 down, with 187 more to go.


Man of the West (1958) Ashton Productions :: Walter Mirisch Productions :: United Artists / P: Walter Mirisch / D: Anthony Mann / W: Reginald Rose, Will C. Brown (novel) / C: Ernest Haller / E: Richard V. Heermance / M: Leigh Harline / S: Gary Cooper, Julie London, Lee J. Cobb, Arthur O'Connell, Jack Lord, John Dehner, Royal Dano, Robert J. Wilke
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Shameless Plugs :: The Archive is Going Ape!

April 27, 2015, 11:23 am
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Vintage Tuneage :: Happy 70th Birthday, Sunday Girl.

July 2, 2015, 11:48 am
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The Cult Movie Project #8 (of 200) :: The Asphalt's Lament on the Road to Nowhere: Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)

April 29, 2015, 11:46 pm
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Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) is a film that requires a lot of patience that can be read (and reward you) on many different levels, metaphorically speaking. I don't think I've ever seen a film so obsessed with speed and movement that felt so inert. And apathetic. And alienated. But fluidly so. And yes, I know, that doesn't make any sense. At all. But it's true. And I freely admit my patience was stretched pretty thin, thanks to a third act that kinda slips the clutch and grinds itself up in its own existential gearbox; and I cannot settle on what, exactly, director Monte Hellman was trying to say as all those metaphors kept piling up on the side of the road. (See what I did there?) And then, there's that ending; a film within a film and a faulty projector based, Hellman later recollected, on a dream he'd had, where our hero realizes he has no room in his movie for anybody or anything.


The film's origins can be traced back to an autobiographical tale by Will Corry, which documented a 1968 cross-country road trip by two men and a woman who tagged along. Producer Michael Laughlin optioned the story and tagged Monte Hellman, another Roger Corman protege, to direct it. Hellman liked the bones of Corry's journey and Floyd Mutrux's adapted screenplay but felt it hadn't reached its full potential and recommended noted counter-culture scribe Rudolph Wurlitzer to flesh it out. But Wurlitzer barely got five pages into Corry's version before the decision was made to basically junk it -- except for the four main characters: the Car, the Driver (Taylor), the Mechanic (Wilson) and the Girl (Bird). 


Immersing himself in hot-rod mags and the stoner car culture of the San Fernando Valley, Wurlitzer added GTO (Oates) to the mix and plugged them all into a race that was less about the finish line and more about the journey and what was breached along the way. But all of this effort was almost for naught when the original production company pulled the plug. Fortunately, Ned Tanen, a young turk at Universal, not only agreed to take over and finance the film, but gave Hellman free rein on casting and guaranteed the director final cut. 


Still thinking outside the box, Hellman cast two musicians and a model with no acting experience for the leads. He also insisted that the film be shot on location as the journey progressed. Thus and so, the director led his cast and crew on an eight-week odyssey along the fabled Route 66 that would eventually land them in Memphis, Tennessee, shooting the whole way in sequence. And the film is beautifully shot as it immerses you into this auto-culture and the decay around the backwater byways as these once thriving arteries wither and dry up. You can honestly feel the heat and vibration of the engines and smell the gas, oil, and vulcanized rubber. And as filming progressed, the director only doled out the day's script pages as they went, never letting his cast read the whole thing and know where the story was going, causing some consternation with his players.  


Once filming wrapped, the editing process began, which netted a film nearly three and a half hours long. This, was a problem. For, even though he had final cut, a clause in the fine print obligated Hellman to edit the film however he wanted -- as long as the end result was under two hours. And while Hellman whittled the film down to 105 minutes, basically excising half of it, Esquire magazine featured the film on the front page of the April, 1971, issue, which proclaimed Two-Lane Blacktop the movie of the year -- even though no one had seen it yet. (The magazine based their opinion entirely on the screenplay, which it reprinted in its entirety.) Expectations were high, but, alas, proved too high.


Things began to fall apart when Lew Wasserman, the head honcho at Universal, screened the film and hated it so much he refused to promote it. Upon its release, the critics were fairly kind, despite the blow of heightened expectations, and felt the production had true grit but it utterly failed to find an audience. And by the time these favorable reviews came in, the film was already gone.


Honestly, it's easy to see why the film was initially rejected. It could almost be considered a foreign import for, aside from the thunder of revving engines and peeling of rubber, silence rules this film and the (perfunctory) language engaged by the Driver and the Mechanic is mostly shop talk. (Myself, I only know enough Gear-Head to get myself into trouble when I take my car for an oil change.) Taylor and Wilson do just fine in their symbiotic roles, searching for something. Perhaps perfection, perhaps not. If this was ever achieved, What would they do then? The sole purpose of their existence is to make enough money to keep the car going, their own sustenance be damned. The car is the top priority. Throwing a monkey-wrench into all of this is the Girl, played brilliantly by Laurie Bird, a hitch-hiker, whose presence does not compute and leads to some *ahem* 'well-entrenched systems' breaking down.


I was more intrigued by Warren Oates' GTO, the compulsive liar, who challenges our two mechanized-zombies to a cross country race for "pinks." A race no one seemed interested in winning let alone finishing. And I was most intrigued by the juxtaposition of the challenged, the '55 Chevy, a relic from the past, rebuilt and maintained by people who have grease on their hands from the ground up, and the spiritual connection this creates, going against the challenger, the '70 Pontiac GTO, a mass-produced muscle-car driven by a "weekend warrior" with no true identity.


It's also easy to read these cars as a substitute for masculinity and the loser of the race must lose theirs to the other; all part of a emasculating de-evolution process of American men being builders turned into mindless consumers. And it's kind of amazing with all that open country how isolated everything feels. It also feels more honest about the malaise of the late 1960s and early '70s as the counter-culture movement flamed out than Easy Rider (1969) ever did.


This was my third viewing of Two-Lane Blacktop and each time my initial less-than-positive reaction to it erodes a little more. Who knows, a couple more viewings and this film might really be something. Right now, definitely worth a spin. Just keep your expectations below 55mph. 


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"All these characters are not heroes to admire -- they are miserable case studies. The sad aspect of Blacktop is that while these two young men take their endless trip to nowhere in their cubicle on wheels, they pass stationary cubicles -- houses owned by all economic classes -- where lights go on to signal that there are people inside who are just as withdrawn and isolated from the problems / horrors of the world. Roland Gelart of The Saturday Review recognized the film's strength: '[It] manages to speak compellingly of contemporary alienation without ever tumbling into the visual clichés of sex, drugs and violence.' We already knew about the alienation of the drug culture and war protesters -- this is about the alienation of everyone else."

  XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXxxxxxxxxxXXXXXXX-- Danny Peary
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The Fine Print: Two-Lane Blacktop was watched via Anchor Bay's Widescreen VHS cassette tape (-- because when he bought it some idiot thought DVDs weren't gonna stick). Watched as a High-Octane double-feature with George Miller's Mad Max (1979). What's the Cult Movie Project? That's eight down, with 192 to go.


Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) Michael Laughlin Enterprises :: Universal Pictures / P: Michael Laughlin / AP: Gary Kurtz / D: Monte Hellman / W: Rudy Wurlitzer, Will Corry, Floyd Mutrux / C: Jack Deerson / E: Monte Hellman / M: Billy James / S: James Taylor, Dennis Wilson, Warren Oates, Laurie Bird, Harry Dean Stanton
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Recommendations :: Should You Be Watching What I'm Watching? That Is the Question. The Answer? Eh. Maybe.

July 5, 2015, 4:20 pm
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If you, like me, have about had it up to here with zombie movies, I would highly recommend The Battery (2012) that brings something fresh to a really rapidly tiring genre. What's odd about this new angle is it doesn't amp things up but slows things down considerably, focusing on the mundane-ness of life after the apocalypse as two men, former baseball players -- a pitcher and a catcher a/k/a the battery, 'natch -- traverse through this abandoned landscape, constantly on the move, no destination, exploring new venues, always finding the same nothing, and being lonely and sexually frustrated. (The scene where one of our protagonists jerks off as a female zombie mashes her boobs against a car window is both sad and hilarious.) The last third of the movie is just the two of them stuck inside a car, surrounded by zombies, where they just wait out their supplies before bowing to the inevitable, hoping for a miracle. "Maybe they'll just leave," says one. "They never 'just' leave," reminds the other. Great stuff, and highly recommended.


Burying the Ex (2015) finds director Joe Dante presenting a lop-sided love-triangle with a supernatural twist. Now, one of Dante's best traits has always been stripping the veneer off of tired old tropes -- sometimes subversively, sometimes not so subversively, and frankly, this is the kind of tired old plot that could use some stripping and shredding. Sadly, despite throwing a zombie into the mix, Dante instead focuses on poking holes in the L.A. Hipster scene, which doesn't really have a universal comical appeal to those of us in the hinterlands. The film is good, don't get me wrong, and the leads were all appealing enough, but it felt like it was missing something. And that something was the usual ferocity or manic maniacal-ness that, to me, had always elevated Dante above most of his peers. Definitely worth a look, would've made a excellent short, just check your expectations at the door.


Somewhere, Irwin Allen just burst out of his grave, smiled, held two thumbs up and said "Now that's how we used to make 'em." Sure, this flick is patently ridiculous but a shit was not given by me as I loved every hair-brained minute of this good old fashioned disaster flick. It is essentially a remake of Earthquake (1974) with catastrophic elements of The Towering Inferno (1974) and The Poseidon Adventure (1972) thrown in alongside a love-triangle and reconciliation that's straight out of the Airport franchise (1970-1979). The best thing to say about San Andreas (2015) is that, yes, it makes little sense and is all about mass destruction but at the same time it doesn't insult your intelligence the way Bay and Emmerich did and do. Those characters who should die, die, and those who shouldn't didn't and you don't want them to as a family tries to save themselves and patch things up while the world falls apart around them. (Lets hear it for METAPHORS!!!) The Rock continues to prove he is a charisma volcano and matching him scene for scene is Carla Gugino, as the soon to be ex-wife, and their daughter, Alexandra Daddario, making a nice recovery from that terrible Texas Chainsaw reboot. Also props to Paul Giamiti as the seismology expert who everyone is smart enough to listen to once things start to rock'n and a roll'n. This thing was a total blast and deserves to be seen on the big screen, folks. Hurry, before it's too late!


When a blind and bitter Vietnam vet takes up residence in a gated assisted-living community, where the elderly, well, "don't go to live", there is strong evidence that something strange and deadly is going on in Late Phases (2014), starting with a large broken claw he pries out of the wall of his new home, then his new neighbor being slaughtered as he listens on, and ending with the mauling death of his beloved seeing-eye dog as it defends him against the same attacker. Now, the film lets us know off the bat that we're dealing with a werewolf -- though the local authorities have written off this rash of deaths rather rashly as wild animal attacks -- and so, the real mystery of the film is who it is that's turning into one, leaving our protagonist one month to sniff out the real monster before the full moon cycles around again. I think the best way to describe this movie is a more grounded and absurdest-comedy-stripped version of Bubba Ho-Tep (2002). There's some standard subplots in the mix; most notably an estranged son, and an askance look at how we tend to discard the elderly once they've outlived their usefulness. And at some point the viewer realizes that our hero's quest is less about protecting his neighbors or avenging his dog and more about going out on his own terms. Nick Damaci is amazing as Ambrose, an abrasive, no-nonsense and borderline unlikeable noodnik. (Which reminds me that I still need to see Stake Land.) Good to see Tina Louise, Caitlin O'Heaney, Rutanya Alda and a barely recognizable Lance Guest working again. Fair warning: after a slam-bang opening, the film settles into a slow and deliberate groove -- maybe too slow and too deliberate for some (30 days is a lot of time to kill) -- but stick with it. Trust me.


Diplomaniacs (1933) was my first Wheeler and Woolsey comedy. Coming out the same year as Duck Soup, both films hew fairly close to each other plot-wise. (They even share the same villain in Louis Calhern). But while the Marx Bros. are pure anarchy, upsetting all kinds of apple carts on the road to war, the W 'n' W formula appears to be full-frontal bedlam as everyone -- from the bad guys to the background players to the sets themselves -- are playing too. You'd think this lack of a straight-man would be counter-productive (-- though one could argue, I think, that W 'n' W ARE the straight-men as most of the gags and Marjorie White bounce off them), the film manages to keep the buzz going, fighting the new production code the whole way. Fair warning, your historical-context-o-meter will be taxed to the hilt by a minstrel show climax, a souring bit of buzzkill in an otherwise fairly hilarious vintage comedy.


Though often described as The Asylum's knock-off of Twister (1996), the weather and property damage F/X in Into the Storm (2014) are actually really good. The plot it's all expended on is rock stupid, yes, but it's all rather harmlessly silly -- and not the annoying kind of silly, as stock characters (a dysfunctional family, a dysfunctional group of storm chasers, and a highly functional pair of peckerwoods) do exactly what you think they'll do as a super-storm (subbing in for Bruce the Shark) wreaks havoc on a small Oklahoma town (and its international airport). Sure, the selective gravity and weight differential of what gets sucked up and what doesn't is a bit of a puzzler, but I just didn't care. I was laughing too hard. C'mon, get in the suck-zone and give this one a spin.


Using a 'day in the life' of the 21st Precinct (NYC) as a backdrop, William Wyler delivers a cruel and bitter life lesson in Detective Story (1951) for a self-righteous, crusading detective (Kirk Douglas) as his case against an abortionist / unwanted-baby broker falls apart when things get personal. How? Well, the movie's too good for that kinda spoiler. Sorry. But it's definitely worth finding out. Douglas is his usual mercurial can of awesome (-- though he does kinda spit the bit in a few scenes), as is Eleanor Parker, his wife with the terrible secret, and they're surrounded by an outstanding supporting cast of fellow cops, hoodlums, and first time offenders needing a break (Horace McMahon, Frank Faylen, Lee Grant, Kathy O'Donnell, and William Bendix has seldom been better). I will also be eternally grateful to this film because it inspired Danny Arnold to create one of the greatest ensemble comedies of all time, Barney Miller (1974-1982), for the Boob-Tube. Fate and bad-timing definitely get their hands dirty, here, and, admittedly, the film is kind of a self-destructive bummer, but still recommended.


And lastly, spent Independence Day watching Killer Bee movies. And not just any old Killer Bee movies, but Made for TV Killer Bee movies. And it wasn't easy. Wound up watching The Savage Bees (1976), sorry, Killer Bienen, in German because it was the only version I could find streaming. (Ach, du lieber.) Anyhoo, between memory and making crap up the film opens when the Coast Guard finds an abandoned freighter running aground near New Orleans and the only body pulled from the drink is covered in strange welts. Meantime, something is knocking off several locals until the local sheriff (Ben Johnson), coroner (Michael Parks), and entomology expert (Gretchen Corbett) piece it all together. Seems that freighter had a stowaway -- a queen African bee and her swarm. Of course the mayor refuses to cancel Mardi Gras, leaving it up to our motley band of heroes to find the hive and destroy it before more people are slo-mo'd stung to death. Loved this one as a kid, love it now, and loved the ending of pushing a bee-swamped VW Bug into the Superdome to freeze the little bastards to death. And I followed it up immediately with Terror Out of the Sky (1978), which turned out to be a direct sequel to The Savage Bees, with the adorable Tovah Feldshuh taking over the lead character for the equally adorable Corbett (the only returning character). Turns out some of those killer bees survived and have taken over several hives at a government research facility. Worse yet, several of them have been shipped across the country, leading to a race against the clock to retrieve them before they spread and kill thousands. Along for the bee round-up ride are Efrem Zimbalist Jr. and Dan Haggerty as competing love interest as the film basically rehashes the first, subbing in a school bus full of Boy Scouts for the VW. Alas, Terror Out of the Sky wound up being the Jaws 2 of Killer Bee movies in that not nearly enough people get stung to death (-- only two people and one dog) which is extremely counter-intuitive to what brought us here in the first place. 

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Cult Movie Project #14 (of 200): Wrong Turns and Choosing Your Fate Before Fate Chooses You in Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour (1945).

July 9, 2015, 1:26 pm
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Is it the best film noir ever? Maybe. The darkest, bleakest, most twisted film noir ever? Definitely. And unrelentingly so. However, Edgar G. Ulmer's lean and mean no-budget miracle probably isn't as great as most would have you believe -- well, depending on your expectation. Expectation can be a harsh mistress seldom satisfied, I always say, and they were a major stumbling block on my first encounter with Detour (1945), where, I fear, they were a bit too over-inflated when what I'd read stacked up against what I saw. Over the years since, expectation and experience have leveled off, however, allowing me to reevaluate the film and truly appreciate it as a defective masterpiece.


How did such a gifted director like Ulmer wind up as the opal in the offal at PRC -- the absolute dead end of Poverty Row as far as Hollywood studios are concerned? Depends on who you believe. According to the director, the choice was self-imposed to give himself more artistic freedom. According to everyone else, he got caught sleeping with the wife of the son of Universal mogul, Carl Laemmle, and found himself unofficially black-listed from the majors. However he wound up there, there he was, doing some amazing things squeezing everything he could out of whatever change PRC found in their couch cushions.


Rumored to have been shot in less than a week, using only four sets, and a cast of five to ten, Detour is an advanced doctorate in low-budget filmmaking. The film itself is fairly simple, quick, and dirty as our hero -- wait, no, sorry, I just can't bring myself to call him our hero. A noir hero must garner likability, sympathy or some inkling of being redeemable even as he/she does awful deeds and flushes everything down the toilet. Here, destitute New York musician Al Roberts (Neal) has none of these qualities as he gets himself in over his head while trying to hitchhike across the country to get to his girl (Drake) in Hollywood. For, just as things are looking up, everything goes to hell on him.


Playing this schlub is an eerily typecast Neal, whose own biography of woe, scandal, felonious assault, poisoned relationships, and murder would make a fine noir all on its own. A glass half-empty (and full of Strychnine and razor blades) kinda guy, Al also serves as our omniscient narrator, making excuses for every rash and bone-headed choice he makes. And it is about choice, not fate or destiny. Al and the viewer can debate not being in control all they want, but it all comes down to bad choices (and self-fulfilling prophecies) when fate and destiny throw a detour in front of you. (See what I did there?) Here, these bad choices begin when Al steals a car and assumes the identity and bankroll of a gambler (MacDonald) who picked him up, only to keel over and die several hundred miles and a dozen witnesses down the road from apparent natural causes. Fearing the police would never believe that and accuse him of malfeasance and murder, the body is hidden in the desert and Al moves on. But instead of keeping a low profile, Al decides to pick himself up a hitchhiker.




Again, Martin Goldsmith's plot of Detour isn't all that special -- perfunctory is a good word, but in the hands of Ulmer and his small cast the total amperage cranked out of it is kinda mind-boggling. And sparking-off the most is Ann Savage as the venomous, spiteful, and completely whackadoodle Vera, the hitchhiker, in a performance for the ages. Each line is spat, each piercing look with maddened eyes and raised eyebrow could vaporize glacial ice. I've also often wondered if Vera had a little more eating away at her insides than consumption, eating away at her brain, but mentioning V.D. in those days was a big no-no.


Apparently due to a backfiring prank between takes (that involved a tongue and an ear), Savage and Neal did not like each other at all and this animosity leeches over onscreen, discharging a few more volts. It's kinda fun to watch the weaselly Al squirm as Vera twists him into several knots around her finger. She has him cold, knows he stole the car and believes he killed the owner, and uses this to blackmail him into a shopping spree and a drinking binge and a mad scheme to get even more money through a fraudulent inheritance grab. Tension rises as we barrel toward the climax like a runaway train, the brakes failed, the engineer dead, the tracks broken and Vera pulling the levers.


Now, I'm still not quite sure of the convoluted physics of the phone cord getting wrapped around the drunken Vera's neck as she spitefully tries to call the cops in a separate room but its another attempt to alleviate Al of any guilt as he inadvertently and unknowingly strangles her to death. Now truly guilty of murder, Al is finally free of Vera's grip. I also find it funny that Goldsmith's script did not include Al getting arrested for Vera's murder but the opening prologue and subsequent flashback and epilogue, where Al is pinched, were added to bring the film up to the Hayes Code, which explicitly stated that no one could get away with murder unpunished.


Through the whole film Ulmer and Goldsmith do their best to paint Al as the unluckiest sonofabitch on the planet but I'm not sure I buy this. With each viewing, I find it harder and harder to muster any sympathy for Al. Again, it's about choices. Did he have to pick up Vera? Who just happened to be the girl the gambler made a pass at and scratched him up. Was it out of kindness? Or was it because she had a nice pair of gams? When he finally gets a ride, it just happens to be with the man about to have a coronary. But did Al have to take the car, steal the clothes, use the money of the gambler? Forensics aren't anything like they are today but I think even the most local yokel would know the difference between murder and a natural causes and the difference between pre- and post-mortem injuries. No. Al is an opportunist, who begs the audience as the narrator for reassurance that his wrong choices were the only choices he had.


Then again, maybe I'm being too hard on Al. Not thinking clearly under stress is what makes most of us human, right? I guess what I'm trying to say is Detour is a great film but far from perfect. If you are aware of its reputation may I offer this advice: cut your expectations in half, at least, and then the rewards of this film are many. If you're walking in blind, you are in for a real treat. 


Sadly, one of the biggest hurdles with watching Detour is due to a copyright lapse and the resulting purgatory of Public Domain Hell has led to an overabundance of crappy, nigh unwatchable copies floating around. Too bad. The film deserves a full Criterion restoration treatment that we will probably never get. 

Other Points of Interest:



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"Detour is truly an unusual film, far more intense and stylish than the run of the mill low-budget film, and featuring the oddest, most repellent symbiotic (leechlike) relationship in cinema history. This, plus the fact that it was made by Ulmer -- regarded as the 'master' of the B-film -- in just six days, using only four characters of any significance, and only six minimally furnished sets, makes it a natural for critics to be impressed by quality in spite of the low budget." 

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXxxxxxxxxxXXXXXXX-- Danny Peary   
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The Fine Print: Detour was watched via Amazon Prime Instant Streaming. Watched as a Fatal Fatale Film Noir double-feature with Sunset Boulevard (1950). What's the Cult Movie Project? That's 14 down, with 186 to go.  

Detour (1945) Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC) / P: Leon Fromkess / AP: Martin Mooney / D: Edgar G. Ulmer / W: Martin Goldsmith / C: Benjamin H. Kline / E: George McGuire / M: Leo Erdody / S: Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake, Edmund MacDonald


 
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Favorites :: Vintage Ads: If You Don't Tune in By Midnight...

July 12, 2015, 2:02 am
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Cult Movie Project #15 (of 200): The Difficulty of Proving You're Not Dead, When So Many of Them Are: Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950)

July 14, 2015, 12:31 am
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It began life as an old cattle trail in the late 1700s, skirting around the mountains that formed the Los Angeles basin, funneling travelers and stock toward the ocean. In 1877 it officially became a street, and by 1921 they finished paving it. Today, Sunset Boulevard runs approximately 22 miles (it used to be even longer), beginning near Chavez Ravine and Dodger Stadium at the east end (where it used to begin near Union Station), and as you follow its serpentine path westward, the thoroughfare passes through Los Feliz, Hollywood, West Hollywood -- where it morphs into the fabled Sunset Strip for a stretch, and then continues on through Beverly Hills and Bel-Air, skirting around the UCLA campus in Westwood, then Brentwood to the Pacific Palisades, where it terminates at the Pacific Coast Highway. Along the way you will have passed the Chateau Marmont, the Cinerama Dome, the Hollywood Palladium, Hollywood High, the Hotel Bel-Air, the Whiskey a Go Go and the Roxy Theater. You'll also have successfully navigated your way around "Dead Man's Curve", where singer Jan Berry almost died in an auto accident, later immortalized in song by Jan and his partner, Dean Torrence.


Some of Hollywood's earliest film studios cropped up around Sunset Boulevard in 1911, as well, and its burgeoning stars, now long forgotten, built their expansive mansions along it, too. This kind of sad, disposable detritus, and the fact that it pierces through the false-facade-of-a-heart of Hollywood itself, I think, goes a long, long way in explaining why Billy Wilder picked it as a title for his film that skewered Tinsel Town for its callousness on such things, with agents, script-doctors, producers, directors and moguls taking the brunt of his wrath. For this is a tale of a malignant bond between the victims of these machinations; a "never was" and a "has been". Cast-offs both, and each the answer to all the others' problems. One temporarily, the other permanently. And painted around this framework, where the line between illusion and delusion is nearly non-existent, the film also serves as a funeral dirge for out-dated Hollywood styles that have been kicked to the curb (film noir, Gothic horror, silent cinema).


Seems while growing up in Germany in the 1920s, Wilder became fascinated with American culture via (silent) cinematic imports, which eventually lured him to Hollywood in 1933. His big break came in 1939 when he teamed up with (soon to be long time collaborator) Charles Brackett on the script for Ninotchka, a screwball comedy by Ernst Lubitsch, and a career redefining role for Greta Garbo. Wilder and Brackett rode quite the hot-streak after that (Hold Back the Dawn (1941) and Ball of Fire (1941)), which earned Wilder a shot at directing their next script, another box-office smash, The Major and the Minor (1942). After then, after churning out an interesting propaganda piece on Why we Fight, Wilder managed the seemingly impossible, adapting James M. Cain's sultry thriller Double Indemnity (1944) and getting most of its saucier elements past the Breen office, legitimizing and cementing the look of American film noir for the next decade. And his next project landed Wilder his first Academy Award for The Lost Weekend (1945).


As the 1940s came to a close, Wilder became fascinated by the grand mansions littered throughout Hollywood, still haunted/occupied by the silent film stars he fell in love with in his youth, and wondered what they did with themselves while cocooned-up inside them now that the industry they helped establish had, for all intents and purposes, written them off. And this nugget of an idea, these museum pieces left to molder, the story of an aging starlet who lost her celebrity and her strained and vain efforts to win them back, got the ball rolling for Sunset Boulevard (1950), the blackest of comedies, shot like a horror movie (-- I contend in presciently predicted the Hagsploitation cycle due the next decade, kicking off with Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962)), wrapped inside a film noir. It shouldn't have worked. And in anyone else's hands, it probably wouldn't have.


Work on the script began in 1948 but neither Brackett or Wilder could get a true handle on it, and so, they brought in D.M. Marshman, a journalist who had impressed the both of them with his critiques of their films to hash it out. (Erich von Stroheim also contributed to the plot, including the revelation that Max was behind all of Norma Desmond's fan mail.) Thanks to his string of hits, Paramount basically gave Wilder free rein over his projects. Still, with the anti-Hollywood / May-December romantic gist of the story, to keep the studio and the censors in the dark they only submitted the script -- under the nonsensical title, A Can of Beans -- just a few pages at a time. And as the film went into production in 1949 only 61 pages of the script were finished (about 1/3rd of the story), and no one, including Wilder, had any idea how the film would end.


Assembling the cast proved just as difficult. The name of Norma Desmond was a combination of "predatory" silent film star Norma Talmadge and director William Desmond Taylor, whose unsolved murder back in 1922 remains one of Hollywood's most notorious scandals. The character also shared traits with several more reclusive silent movie queens like Mary Pickford, Mae Murray, Clara Bow and Mabel Normand, most of whom Wilder tried and failed to coax into starring in the picture. Mae West also said no, and Pola Negri's thick accent was deemed insurmountable. Wilder then turned to George Cukor for suggestions, and he immediately recommended Gloria Swanson, who had been Paramount's biggest money-maker for six-straight years in the 1920s. During her heyday, people flocked to her films not only to see the starlet but to also ogle at her wardrobe. Decked in ornate gowns, with extravagant beadwork, topped off with jewels and feathers, Swanson was the epitome of haute couture, making her one of Hollywood's first breakout stars. (She really was that big, but instead of her pictures getting smaller they got bigger as her career stalled in the sound era. More on this in a sec.) But Swanson almost rejected the role upfront when Wilder asked for screen-test, feeling she was above such things. Luckily, Cukor stepped in again and encouraged her to do it -- and by 'encouraged', I mean he threatened to shoot her if she didn't do the test.



"The last one I wrote was about Okies in the dust bowl," says Über-cynic and failed screen-writer, Joe Gillis. "You'd never know, because when it reached the screen, the whole thing played on a torpedo boat." Montgomery Clift was originally cast for the role but he broke his contract and bailed-out two weeks into production, fearing the film mirrored his own relationship with aging actress, Libby Holman, a little too closely. Needing a replacement, and quickly, Wilder offered the role to Fred MacMurray, but he didn't like the character's motivations and turned it down flat. They approached MGM about the possible loan of Gene Kelly, who was eager, but the studio refused. Paramount then suggested William Holden, whose career had essentially stalled since his smashing debut in Golden Boy (1930). Wilder wasn't too keen on it, but he was desperate enough to hire him -- a gamble that paid off big time here and in future collaborative projects (Stalag 17 (1953), Sabrina (1954)).


Another prominent character was located at 3810 Wilshire Blvd. Originally built in 1924 by William Jenkins, who lived in the expansive, Gothic mansion for one year before abandoning it for almost a decade, earning the abode the nickname of "The Phantom." Jenkins eventually sold it to J. Paul Getty, who lost it in a divorce to his second wife, who eventually rented it out to Paramount for the picture, who added the swimming pool, which in typical make-believe land was a total facade, had no filtration system, and so, was essentially useless after filming wrapped. (The mansion and the (empty) pool were re-used briefly in Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause (1955) before being torn down and replaced with an office building.) For the interior, Wilder hired set designer Hans Dreier, who had been an interior designer on the homes of silent stars Bebe Daniels and Norma Shearer. Swanson contributed her personal collection of photographs and memorabilia for Norma Desmond's home, blurring the line between fictional past and authentic career. And while filming inside, cinematographer John Seitz would sprinkle dust into the air, which would catch in the lights, adding a surreal, dreamlike effect.


Sticking with the life-imitates-art theme, Wilder cast Erich von Stroheim as Max, the loyal butler. Again, Von Stroheim added all kinds of subtle touches to the film. I just love the meta-moments when Desmond and Gillis are looking at [Swanson's] old films, and the actress starts pantomiming in front of the screen, including a dead-on impersonation of Charlie Chaplin. It was Von Stroheim who suggested they use clips of Queen Kelly (1929), a film Swanson had produced and Von Stroheim directed. It's the bigger picture I alluded to earlier, where the director went way over budget and deviated wildly from the script, causing Swanson to fire him and spend the next two years trying to salvage the project. (Some of the newer sequences were directed by Swanson herself.) In the film, Max claims he discovered Desmond and made her a star. In real life it was Cecil B. Demille who launched Swanson's career, making it only fitting that he play himself for Desmond's triumphant but ultimately heartbreaking return to Paramount Studios, one of the many sizzling examples of verisimilitude in the film.



Sadly, Sunset Boulevard would prove the last co-production for Wilder and Brackett. Seems the two nearly came to blows over the montage sequence where Norma goes through hell to prepare herself for her big meeting. Brackett thought the sequence sad and cruel, but Wilder felt it was essential to show how maniacally driven the actress was to get back into the limelight. The scene stayed in, as it should, I think, and the partnership was over.


Before its release, Paramount arranged a private screening for several studio heads and specially invited guests. As the legend goes, after the film ended, Babara Stanwyck knelt in front of Swanson and kissed the hem of her skirt. Swanson then looked for Mary Pickford but was told she was too overcome and left. Others were not so kind. Actress Mae Murray was offended and reportedly remarked "None of us floozies was that nuts." But that paled by the tirade put on by Louis B. Mayer, who berated Wilder, saying "You have disgraced the industry that made and fed you! You should be tarred and feathered and run out of Hollywood and sent back to Germany!" Wilder, whose family had perished in the Holocaust, responded without missing a beat, telling the pompous mogul to either "Go f*ck youself" or "Go sh*t in your hat" depending on which source you consult.


After it was finally released, Time Magazine declared Sunset Boulevard to be "Hollywood at its worst told by Hollywood at its best." And while the box-office was good it was not great. Still, at the time, it was only the third film to be nominated for Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress (-- it was also up for Best Cinematography and Editing.) And while it didn't win in any of those categories, it did win for Best Screenplay, Best Art Direction, and Franz Waxman took home an Oscar for his score. I think Swanson should've won but faced stiff competition from Bette Davis in All About Eve, which cleaned up in those major categories, so much so that the two split the vote enough to allow Judy Holliday to sneak in and win for Born Yesterday.


What amazes me most about Sunset Boulevard is that the viewer becomes so engrossed in this roil of madness and self-destruction that we forget our storyteller is dead. From the get-go we know Joe Gillis is no longer with us, another rat floating in the pool. Although he almost wasn't. Well he was, dead, just not in the pool. That wasn't supposed to happen until the end. Seems in the original cut, the film opens in the L.A. County Morgue, with Gillis posthumously relating his tale of woe to his fellow corpses but this sequence brought so much inappropriate laughter from preview audiences the film's release was delayed nearly six months so the new iconic opening could be shot with our hero face down in the pool. But is he really our hero? Or is he a homme fatale, a dastardly gigolo, leading Norma Desmond down the road to ruin. (He also steals his best friend's girl.) To me, that is the only way this film works as film noir. As a horror movie, obviously, Norma is the villain. As a combination of both, I honestly don't know who to root for; and I've struggled with this ever since I first saw the film and still struggle with it every time I've watched Sunset Boulevard since. 

Other Points of Interest:



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"Speaking of Poe, Sunset Boulevard is another conception of The Premature Burial. As Gloria Swanson wrote about silent movie stars in Close-Ups (1977): 'It has become difficult to prove you're not dead. So many of us are.' And what better locale for a 'ghost' story than Hollywood, a town built on illusion and delusion, where people grow old but stay young on celluloid, where people become has-beens often before they've made it. 'I heard you had talent,' Betty says of Joe. 'That was last year,' Joe declares ... 'I talked to a couple of yes men at Metro -- they said no to me.'"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXxxxxxxxxxXXXXXXX-- Danny Peary 
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The Fine Print: Sunset Boulevard was watched via Paramount's Centennial Collection DVD. Watched as a Fatal Fatale Film Noir double-feature with Detour (1945). What's the Cult Movie Project? That's 15 down, with 185 to go.


Sunset Boulevard (1950) Paramount Pictures / P: Charles Brackett / D: Billy Wilder / W: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, D.M. Marshman Jr. / C: John F. Seitz / E: Arthur P. Schmidt / M: Franz Waxman / S: William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Jack Webb
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Random Film Observation #478 :: How to Properly Accessorize Your Blood and Leather for that Special Dinner Engagment.

July 18, 2015, 2:07 am
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I always pride myself whenever I notice something new in a film I've watched, like, a gazillion times before. And I get an even bigger charge of endorphins if the latest observation hasn't, as far as I know, been picked up by anyone else. And so, there I was, watching Dark Sky's new 40th Anniversary BluRay transfer of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) as part of the ever-plodding along Cult Movie Project; and as I boggled at how clean and crisp the transfer was, we finally reached the notorious family dinner scene, where I noticed something. Something Leatherface was wearing...


And as I rewound and then freezed the frame for a longer and closer look, I realized that when he dressed up for dinner, our gibbering man-child (Hansen) decided to wear the bracelet Pam (McMinn) had been wearing.


It becomes even more obvious it's the same bracelet in the scenes during the climax when our villain gives chase and eventually falls and chainsaws his own leg. And crystal clear in the outtake reel, also included on the BluRay.


I assume he confiscated the jewelry after capturing, skewering, and stowing his latest victim away in the freezer. (Note how he wears nothing during the capture.)


This discovery also got me to thinking, wondering, What if... Tober Hooper and Kim Henkel had wanted the character to take on more of the attributes of his victims. And perhaps that was also Pam's face he was wearing. And maybe, just maybe, they wanted him to wear Pam's whole ensemble. And then I wondered what that would look like.


Artist interpretation.

And with that, I shuddered, and finished the film, hoping it would help wipe out that mental image. Obviously, this didn't work. And so, I decided to scrawl it down and share it with you all. Sorry about that. Still, that BluRay was pretty awesome and then some.

Other Points of Interest: 



The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) Vortex :: Bryanston Distributing / P: Jay Parsley, Tobe Hooper / D: Tobe Hooper / W: Kim Henkel, Tobe Hooper / C: Daniel Pearl / E: Larry Carroll, Sallye Richardson / M: Wayne Bell, Tobe Hooper / S: Marilyn Burns, Edwin Neal, Allen Danziger, Teri McMinn, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, Gunnar Hansen
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On the Big Screen :: Musical Transcendence, the Fall, and Back Again in Bill Pohlad's Love and Mercy (2014)

July 21, 2015, 2:13 am
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As the old cliche goes, there is a fine line between genius and madness. Somewhere along the way, that line was obliterated for Brian Wilson, lead songwriter for The Beach Boys, due to a combination of mental illness, years of physical and emotional abuse from his father, and narcotic addiction.


Bill Pohlad's excellent docu-drama Love and Mercy (2014) splits time to tell this tale by showing us when things fell apart during the recording of "Pet Sounds" and the two decade later aftermath, where a chance encounter with a woman at a car dealership uncovers a whole new layer of use and abuse of Wilson due to a malignant relationship with his therapist, who manipulated his way into controlling everything and keeping his patient isolated and over-medicated.


And as a connection is made and romance blooms in the 1980s, things continue to crumble in the 1960s, making it no surprise as to why Wilson spent nearly three years without getting out of bed.


As the film progresses, Pohlad does an amazing job of using one era to reflect the other to keep the story moving forward, striking a balance between the dissent and the road to recovery. Also, major kudos for the perfect musical cue of all time at the climax. Also, also, the montage sequence where they try to get the right sound for "Good Vibrations" had me tapping my foot through the floor. I've listened to it a dozen times since and all I can hear now is the sawing, stand-up bass that drives the song like a voracious machine.


I had been itching to see this ever since the trailer broke. I admit, I didn't buy John Cusack as the older Brian in the trailer at first but he was fine. Elizabeth Banks was even better as Melinda, who essentially rescued him from himself. (And she looks absolutely smashing in those '80s fashions as well.) And Paul Giamiti once more proves how awesome he is as the lecherous Eugene Landy. Sorry, I just can't bring myself to call him a doctor -- but I'm happy to report that he no longer is one. At least in California.


Back in the past, Paul Dano is ah-mazing as younger Brian, making one believe he really is hearing all those voices and music that no one else can hear, and the frustration this causes when he tries and fails to share it with the others -- and Jack Abel is a downright eerie dead-ringer for Mike Love. All told and heard, this movie is great, the music is incredible, and Brian Wilson is a bona fide genius that was nearly lost but now is found. Highly recommended.


And while we're on the subject, after catching Love and Mercy last night it stirred up a few sketchy memories of an old made-for-TV movie on The Beach Boys that focused not on Brian but Dennis Wilson, who had his own share of problems, including getting tangled up with Charles Manson and his brood. 


And after some digging around on YouTube, I found it: Summer Dreams (1990). Turns out I remembered the film rather vividly as those memories solidified -- but I had completely forgotten that Bruce Greenwood played Dennis. It was based on Steve Gaines'Heroes and Villians: The True Story of the Beach Boys, a sensationalistic and tabloid style take on the subject matter by a man who was fascinated by the Wilsons but despised their music.


Despite the opening disclaimer and being officially tagged as an "unauthorized" bio-pic most of the events presented echo the newer release; and it does make a nice companion piece for Pohlad's film, filling in some of the blanks on the Wilson's stormy relationship and expanding the story quite a bit. It's currently streaming on YouTube (with German subtitles, alas) for those interested in such things.


Love and Mercy (2014) River Road Entertainment :: Battle Mountain Films :: Roadside Attractions / EP: Jim Lefkowitz, Oren Moverman, Ann Ruark / P: Bill Pohlad, Claire Rudnick Polstein, John Wells / D: Bill Pohlad / W: Oren Moverman, Michael A. Lerner / C: Robert D. Yeoman / E: Dino Jonsäter / M: Atticus Ross / S: John Cusack, Paul Dano, Elizabeth Banks, Paul Giamatti, Joanna Going, Jake Abel
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Ephemera :: Random Screen Grab: Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956)

July 24, 2015, 1:01 pm
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