Hello!

The Noir City Film Festival is cranking up to start unspooling classic noir gold this year; the festival kicks off in San Francisco on January 25 with the Film Noir Foundation’s rescue’n’restoration of Richard Fleischer’s Trapped starring Lloyd Bridges and Barbara Payton. A killer double bill three days into February pairs two pictures that are entirely different experiences on a big screen, Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Hey, I want a Festival poster, which this year riffs on an iconic image from Kiss Me Deadly.

This Friday at Trailers from Hell, producer Jon Davison will be commenting on the trailer of Joe Dante’s Piranha, the wildly overachieving ‘Jaws’ ripoff that got his career into gear. I just saw it again for the first time a few weeks ago and was duly impressed, so will be interested in hearing what Mr. Davison has to say at this remove. Up today to represent TFH’s ‘Monsters from the Ocean Floor’ trailer theme is a trailer for Deep Rising; Wednesday’s coming attraction will be for the deliriously exploitative Humanoids from the Deep.

And a shout out to my Topeka, Kansas based alter ego and co-conspirator in Sergio Leone research, Bill Shaffer. Bill runs film festivals for kids (I attended a Godzilla festival in 2010) and for serious silent movie fans, which is where I think he began a long friendship with the recently-passed actor James Karen.

Just last week Bill came West for the first time to attend Mr. Karen’s memorial gathering; I happily jumped up to give him the six-bit tour of Hollywood and environs, which included a stop at the early Buster Keaton studio, still standing on Eleanor Street. They put up some plaques and a sign commemorating the spot, albeit on the wrong building, but we took advantage for a photo. I hope Bill (Kansas) can return soon.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello.

At this writing (Friday) I just learned that associate Nick Redman has passed away. I’ve been exchanging nice notes with Nick about disc products since his name began cropping up on DVDs in the late 1990s. The company he co-founded Twilight Time has earned a high roost in the business. Redman’s Variety obit covers his extensive work in documentaries and soundtrack production. His taste, judgment and commitment to quality always stood out, and his writings on film soundtracks were unmatched.

Nick did not make the fight for his health into a mystery. The last couple of years saw him in and out of treatment, noted on Facebook. When I first heard of his troubles I carefully wrote in, expressing concern; Nick wrote back with typical clarity of mind, telling me the score as he knew it without dramatics or self pity. I admire his courage, and know I’ll remember him.

Thoughtful correspondent Lee Kaplan sent along an article of interest, by Henry K. Miller at the BFI page. 1963 and all that: Raymond Durgnat and the birth of the Great British Phantasmagoria brings up my favorite film writer in the context of the evolution of film criticism in the 1960s. Raymond Durgnat was one of the first to champion ‘rejected’ pictures like Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom and Mario Bava’s Black Sunday. My first realization that Barbara Steele had become a horror legend was Durgnat’s obsessive writing about her morbid appeal: “Is she any the less desirable?” The article offers a mini-history of the publication of English and French film magazines. One reference explains the origin of the now-legendary French publication Midi-Minuit Fantastique.

With lightning speed, CineSavant advisor and fixer Gary Teetzel informs us whenever announcements or rumors of new genre Blu-rays appear on the horizon. This week it’s a new Blu from Scream Factory, The Mole People. Scream mentions a new making-of show and a Tom Weaver commentary, which is always a plus. I wonder, will Tom praise the minimalist mini-epic as beloved nostalgia, or will he be transparently critical of its shortcomings — you know, will it remind him too much of a Hammer film?

I answered Gary indignantly, protesting that the announced extras included no feature-length docu on the film’s amazing host and presenter, Dr. Frank C. Baxter. Gary wondered if it were not too late to include Dr. Baxter’s greatest acting triumph, Hemo the Magnificent. In a burst of critical insight worthy of Raymond Durgnat, Gary then reacted to Scream’s decision to include two full encodings of Mole People, one at 1:85 and the other at 2:1. Gary’s cinematic musing:

“The precedent for multiple aspect ratios was, of course, set by Criterion’s Blu-ray release of On the Waterfront. If you think about it, the two films are thematically linked: Kazan’s Waterfront reveals the corruption among those controlling labor on the docks, while Virgil Vogel’s The Mole People unflinchingly depicts the deplorable working conditions of the downtrodden Mole People, who don’t benefit from a union. And doesn’t the Mole Person design remind you of Marlon Brando?  Perhaps Budd Schulberg wrote Mole People under a pseudonym!  Guess we’ll have to wait for the commentary to find out.”

Have you ever really looked at the difference between a 1:85 and a 2:1 scan?  It’s a distinction for only the most serious film nerds devotees. Personally speaking, the only Mole People I know are the restaurant staff that whip up that terrific chocolate-y Mexican sauce, mole poblano.

Gary’s definitely on a roll… with two Mole People links from Tom Weaver. There exists a song, a peppy tune by the distinguished team of Livingston and Evans. For a minute, I thought it was something by the satirist Tom Lehrer, but no, it actually feels inspired by the movie, or perhaps a Times Square walk-by of the movie’s poster. Here are the composers singing Mole People!, and also a cover version by Michael Feinstein. If you ask me, Spielberg’s press info about remaking West Side Story must be a diversion from his actual secret super-project, “Mole!” The Musical.

On a (slightly) more serious note, Gary brings news that might motivate me to see a new Godzilla movie in a real theater. Lee Hyo-won’s Hollywood Reporter article Godzilla: King of the Monsters to Get ScreenX Format Release means that it might screen at a Korean neighborhood theater not far from CineSavant headquarters — and conveniently right next to the service station I favor to change the oil in my cars!  ScreenX sounds like a really bogus format, but it might be an excellent field trip opportunity for myself and pals Gary and Darren Gross.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Dependable CineSavant correspondent ‘woggly’ has sent a link to a pretty impressive (and very lengthy) Historic L.A. Theaters in Movies website that documents the extensive, extravagant re-dressing of real Hollywood locations to recreate 1969 for the next Quentin Tarantino movie “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”. I reported briefly last summer on the bits of leftover art direction I personally saw on Hollywood Blvd. and at Paramount, but I didn’t know that they re-did the Cinerama Dome to ‘bring back’ Krakatoa East of Java, including a giant mural-like reproduction of its poster. I’m rather relieved that Tarantino’s story reportedly includes the historical Manson-Tate killings but is not solely about them… that’s always been the stuff of nightmares.

Charlie Largent found this encoding of the behind-the-scenes Home Movies from Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. I think they’re the same ones on the fine 2011 Blu-ray, and the color, etc. is excellent. See Chaplin direct dozens of extras, including stars like Henry Daniell, and above, Reginald Gardiner.

Charlie contributes a Popeye review today, and if the schedule holds, he’ll follow with a review of Scream Factory’s Plague of the Zombies this coming Saturday. I’m doubling back to some prime discs from Twilight Time, Powerhouse Indicator and an impressive batch of discs from Kino Lorber. At least one is from the end of February … I wonder if reviewing it now is too early?

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Reviewer and all-round good sort Charlie Largent sends along this five-minute video clip called Flying Over Hollywood, filmed sometime in the 1960s. We see the first iteration of the Universal Studio Tour hilltop construction, the Hollywood Sign, various Beverly Hills mansions, etc. The helicopter flies over several studios.

I identify, at these timings, the following less- iconic places: I think the cameraman thought this was a studio, but I don’t think it is (1:03); Warner Bros in Burbank (I’m pretty sure, 1:08); An old Fox lot on Western just South of Sunset, which later became the Deluxe lab (1:25); Looking West down Hollywood Blvd from Gower (my Toyota dealership is in the foreground on the cut, 2:01); 20th Fox, moving from Pico Blvd North, showing the ‘Hello Dolly’ street set (3:50, and pictured above) — at (4:30) the view crosses Olympic Blvd going North to more studio property (including a movie airplane) on land that is now residential streets just West of Century City; MGM looking Northwest across Culver Blvd (5:04); The MGM back lot (I’m pretty sure, 5.18).

Correspondent and advisor Gary Teetzel turns my attention to something I should resist but might not be able to — the soundtrack to the science fiction film Ikarie XB 1. The Zdenek Liska score is coming out from a label called Finders Keepers Records. A price is listed but no release date, which at least gives me time to forget about it before I spend my money. A ‘Tracklist and Soundclips’ link takes us to a couple of samples, but none of the track names given suggest that the film’s memorable ‘space dance number’ is on the disc. It’s so distinctive, it might have been composed by somebody else.

I’ve been pretty good at avoiding direct political jabs lately, but this one was too good to pass up. Remember the 2012 Finnish sci-fi black comedy Iron Sky, the strident anti-Neocon tale about surviving Nazis re-invading Earth from a base on the dark side of the moon?   An even more politically caustic sequel is on the way, and to promote it the finicky Finnish filmmakers have put together a special trailer that’s so biased, it almost isn’t funny: Iron Sky The Coming Race trailer. How dare the Finns lampoon American politics, you say? As foreigners are the ones that keep having to bear the burden of our ‘interesting’ foreign policies, I think they should be able to protest as much as they want.

And Kino Lorber has detailed its February releases, which include the dippy psychedelic western Zacariah, Walter Matthau in the Jack Lemmon- directed Kotch, Cliff Robertson & Claire Bloom in an adaptation of Flowers for Algernon, Charly; Sidney Lumet’s sorority-of-vipers epic The Group, Burt Lancaster in The Midnight Man, Burt Lancaster in the Technicolor film noir Desert Fury (just above); John Farrow’s 1940 A Bill of Divorcement and Terence Young’s obscure but curious pirate picture with Anthony Quinn, The Rover.

Thanks for reading — Glenn Erickson