Hello!

We welcome new guest reviewer Denise Morrison to CineSavant today … and look forward to more coverage of silent movies … and whatever else appeals to her… !

First up as an item sent over by Gary Teetzel, who found something amusing in an old movie Press Book.

The United Artists / Stanley Kramer sales job for the producer’s sobering atomic Sci-fi drama  On the Beach  was a bigger milestone and must have cost a pretty penny. With the serious notion of ‘changing the world’, the campaign held multiple premieres in numerous world capitals, spreading the film’s stars across the globe for extra publicity. This was touted in the film’s trailer, which also had film footage of the giant billboard in New York, with the slogan written to the right.  →  Ad taglines tended toward hyperbole — this one certainly claimed to have an inside track on the film’s grim subject matter.

The pressbook has plenty of examples of standard ballyhoo ideas, plus tie-ins with record albums, the pocketbook edition. It’s all pretty classy … with a few exceptions.

←  This one’s not bad … a plug in a taxicab to start up a conversation with the drive. It sounds like a good idea in theory, but what kind of inducement does the taxi driver get?  Are the drivers invited to a special screening?  If they were given tickets for their families, I’d think half would accept, and then tell their fares that a buncha Hollywood crooks wanted them to shill for their pinko soap opera. We need footage of Travis Bickle pontificating on the pros and cons of missile defense systems.

→  Now, when I ponder the problem of radioactive fallout, I always light up my best pipe and look for the right tobacco to put in it. I’m sure you do too, but in reverse order. Once upon a time, it wa s standard for stars to endorse products they might never go near; old magazines were full of plugs for booze and cigarettes and everything else, from a galaxy of stars. Did the mention of the upcoming movie mean that United Artists helped pay for the ad, or that they provided Gregory Peck?  I wonder how much money changed hands, and who it went to.

In the defense of this ad, Mr. Peck does seem the kind of guy who smokes a pipe.

←  Things start to go Psychotronic with this tie-in ad for a Hasbro toy. Did anybody in the 1950s say that we’d become a warline nation?  My only way to answer that is my clear memory of a cereal box (sometime between 1958 and 1961) that somehow let kids choose what kind of machine gun toy they wanted … the back panel had at least 9 different models.

This ad for an ‘Atomic Submarine Torpedo Toy” seems to want to generete ‘On the Beach’ fever in little kids. It suggests a giveaway “to promote small number of subs for special matinee prizes for youngsters.” Whoa, I never met a kid who saw On the Beach when it was new … my parents treated my curiosity about it, as if it were pornography, or at least something I shouldn’t be worrying my pointed little head about. I guess that’s better than a lobby display of a fallout shelter, or a nurse with a geiger counter, to see which of our classmates has picked a lethal dose from the family reactor. Yep, On the Beach is about peace and harmony, except for the part about the Atomic Submarine Torpedo Toy.

→  The winning entry is the one that Gary pointed out in the first place. Fred Astaire did indeed co-found a nationwide chain of dance studios, and they in fact are still going strong as franchises. He was directly involved on some level until 1966, which means that this tie-in plug may have been something he knew about.

According to this blurb in the Press Book, The Free Dance lesson idea can be taken up in several ways. The connection is the waltz ‘Waltzing Matilda’ — which to musically-challenged me is more like a ballad. Can one force it into a form that one could use it to teach the waltz?

To me the Waltzing Matilda tune is one of On the Beach’s weakest ideas. A couple of cues with the melody would be fine, but it’s grossly over-used and becomes a pain when re-watching the movie. Leaning to dance with it sounds like torture.

Anyway, Gary’s email helps lighten the mood at CineSavant Central — we’re presently reviewing the atomic-misery epic Threads.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Fans of Mario Bava potentially have something to love or hate in a big screening / concert event this Halloween in Los Angeles. The United Theater on Broadway will present a full opera written to be sung to a presentation of Mario Bava’s muscleman costume epic Hercules in the Haunted World, the Technicolor fantasy starring Reg Park and Christopher Lee. The new opera is called  Hercules vs Vampires.  Its music score is by Patrick Morganelli.

A full description is at the link; the ‘campy, vampy’ show describes itself as a “thrilling blend of cinema and live performance [that] transforms the film’s mythic characters into operatic larger-than-life legends. It’s high art meets high camp, with equal parts beef and cheese for an unforgettable Halloween weekend.”

That makes me think that   Ercole al centro della Terra is going be the focus of an MST3K-like roasting. But saying so sounds like reviewing something before seeing it.

The synopsis given follow the story of the original movie; the website says that the new Opera score replaces the original soundtrack, with singing in English. The duration given makes it looks as if about 10 minutes have been cut from the film’s running time. It’s the kind of show where the audience is encouraged to come in costume. Sounds like a new thrill for Rocky Horror folk.

Dependable Michael McQuarrie finds a winner, one that supplies needed information to survive in the modern world.

It’s a public service film by the Navy, about safety in offices. These people have to go to extreme lengths to find the hazards of office work — which becomes a non-stop string of slapstick stunts. We think this one was more to entertain viewers being subjected to informational films. Did serious casualties really come from office buildings as well as the sea lanes?  Gee, why couldn’t WW2 office workers work from home, we ask.

The primary actress doing the pratfalls appears to be channeling Betty Hutton … at least in my humble opinion. A brunet gets herself felt up (our judgment) when she falls off a stepladder. It’s murder in the workplace, honest.

Does the main title music sound like it came from Warners? This is not a cheap-looking short subject. Wish we could identify the leading players.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

A season or two ago The Warner Archives’ George Feltenstein promised great Blu-ray news going forward on a monthly basis, and it soon became clear that he wasn’t kidding …

… since spring the monthly tally of WAC releases per month has doubled; every month has had can’t-miss-it special items ( Last Summer) and a pleasing selection of vintage vault classics.

September is better than we could have hoped. The Archive will release a 4K Disc of David Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter, from 1970. This is one BIG movie, and the prospect in seeing it in 4K is already building up anticipation — Ryan’s was filmed in 65mm; I should think that it is going to look sensational. I’m already hearing from readers who know how much I like it personally.

Arriving with or near Ryan’s Daughter are some very desirable titles, in Blu-ray: John Ford’s The Lost Patrol, the Doris Day movie Please Don’t Eat the Daisies., Glenn Ford and Geraldine page in Dear Heart; Bette Davis in Marked Woman, the Complete Maverick TV Show from the 1950s, and the extreme-case preCode drama SkyScraper Souls.

We can also rest a little easier in regard to the umpcoming fancy restoration of Terence Fisher’s Dracula / Horror of Dracula. It’s expected this Fall, although I don’t think it’s been given an official date as yet. The good news is that the trusted home video producer
Constantine Nasr has posted a clear statement that assures us of the content of the new 4K remaster. Quoth Mr. Nasr:

“This is the complete original film prior to any censorship. Full stop. You’ve not seen what is here because I am working on this release, have seen it and can assure you that even past ‘restorations’ are incomplete.”

Finally, a trusted voice on the subject. So good for us …

And finally, Michael McQuarrie has located an online copy of the old  Victory at Sea TV show … not the full series of 26 half-hour shows, but the version that was edited into a single-length feature. It telescopes the entire season of the documentary show down to about 90 minutes. It’s a good way to get an overview of the Navy war, at least as how it was seen in 1956 or so, from Pearl Harbor to the A-Bomb. But it hasn’t been shown much since the 1960s.

It’s also nice to not have so many repeats of the Richard Rodgers / Robert Russell Bennett music score — I remember Steven Spielberg saying that he had asked John Williams to give some of his music for ‘1941’ the flavor of Victory at Sea, and that’s exactly the note hit when the submarine surfaces in the first scene.

P.D. copies of the whole series are easy to find. Michael looked for this feature version because I had written about it in my review last month of Fred Zinnemann’s  The Seventh Cross. I remembered being emotionally affected (as a child) by a brief montage alluding to concentration camp horror, that was not part of the finale of the TV show. I can now finally see that the shot of scores of hanged prisoners is not an outtake from The Seventh Cross, but part of the Army film record.

If you check out the end of the show, you’ll come across the montage — that brief shot that disturbed me had more impact because it was cross-dissolved with the shots before and after. The superimposed smoke made it look like a scene from hell. Video makes viewing a lot different now, because we can study individual shots — rather than wait a year to maybe catch them again.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

It’s pretty clever …. Joe Dante circulated this 1960s TV spot reportedly written by comic Stan Freberg.

The direction is excellent — most spots trying to look hip like this one, quickly date, but this one is as funny as ever. We always thought that Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels were spot-on with their performances, and here they show a sense of humor as well.

And another western parody, this one from Michael McQuarrie.

It’s a spoof of Spaghetti westerns and operetta, with stand ins for the characters of For a Few Dollars More. The joke isn’t particularly deep but the production and direction are excellent. We also liked the use of music.

The skit is from the Italian RAI TV organization. I’m told that it was originally posted by Italo Western expert Tom Betts.

No English subs … but Leone fans will get every joke.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson