Hello!

Last week when Gary Teetzel reported that a newly remastered disc of the classic Gorgo was on the way from Vinegar Syndrome in 4K Ultra HD, we traded jokes about pampered home video fans (me) whose wishes seem so frequently to come true. Well, on the heels of that news comes an equally killer announcement — the quality UK disc boutique Radiance has spread the word that on the Halloweed-amenable date of October 23, they will be releasing a limited edition Blu-ray set of that most coveted Italian classic The Horrible Dr. Hichcock.

Radiance describes the special edition as a new restoration, with three versions on two Blu-rays: the English-language export version The Terror of Dr. Hichcock (presumably what screened in the U.K.), the re-edited U.S. cut The Horrible Dr. Hichcock, and the English dub of the complete Italian Raptus: The Secret of Dr. Hichcock.

It ought to be a stunning disc; I only hope they find a way to include the original Italian track, which I discovered is the best version. The Radiance website has the full run-down on extras.

And finally, here’s a CineSavant Book Review for the new ‘Scripts from the Crypt’ book from Tom Weaver & associates, dedicated to the 1940 Universal picture The Mummy’s Hand.

We’ve covered a number of these fan-intense books in the past, and several have earned good places on the shelf, like the 2019 book on The Brute Man with its heavy-duty research on Rondo Hatton, and its mug-shot round-up of beloved ugly-mug actors through Hollywood history.

With this tome the SFTC series digs further into 1940s Universal lore, of which Weaver & cohorts might be the reigning authorities. The centerpiece of the book is the full shooting script, in this case actress Peggy Moran’s copy via collector Ron Borst. It takes up 155 pages or so in the book’s center. The first thing that got my attention was Weaver’s lengthy production history section, a couple of them, actually. Armed with studio records, trade paper research and a number of personal interviews, Weaver relates the day-to-day business of cranking out program pictures as if Universal were a small-town factory.. Weaver overwhelms us with facts, figures, photos and dozens of fascinating side stories.

Actors’ recollections can be unreliable, but Tom has a good (and kind) radar for gleaning the likely truth from stories warped by publicity exaggerations. Leading lady Peggy Moran and the film’s mummy, cowboy favorite Tom Tyler, were workaday contractees pulling in a living wage, and lucky to be recognized on the street.

Weaver’s co-authors provide good sidebar essay chapters on the actors, with deep bio dives for Dick Foran & Wallace Ford (Laura Wagner), Peggy Moran (Bob Koster), etc.. Well-known film historian Gregory William Mank contributes an engrossing piece on George Zucco, demolishing the lies about the actor circulated by the Hollywood Babylon II book.

More solid fact-finding academia comes with comprehensive chapters on mummy movies silent (Gary D. Rhodes) and sound (Frank Dello Stritto), which include info on more than a few titles I’d never heard of, plus some surprising images.

With all of this solid content The Mummy’s Hand SFTC isn’t as scrapbook-y as some previous installments, yet we do admire its big-net eclecticism. The text is frequently interrupted with little photo explanations, old advertisements, personal keepsakes from the actors, and odd grabs from the file. Famous Monsters’ two-page eulogy for Wallace Ford ends with typical Forry Ackerman awkwardness — ‘sorry Wally, that we didn’t mention you when you were alive.’ (para.)

Nobody could ghost-write Weaver’s material, as we’d recognize his style of puns and side-jokes anywhere. We were most attracted by the attention given to editorial detail. Weaver devotes several pages to observations of individual scene oddities. Many are the kind of random things we might spot on viewing — possible continuity gaffes, or the fact that one of the actors says a character’s name six times, but never with the same pronunciation. Tom Tyler’s ‘paralyzed’ mummy arm becomes un-paralyzed once or twice!

Armchair editors will lap up a photo essay on the re-use of footage from the ’32 Freund The Mummy, the Im-Ho-Tep flashback repurposed as a Kharis Flashback. Tom Tyler is substituted for Boris Karloff, but Karloff is seen in a few angles anyway. Even more interesting is the fact that the older footage is actually outtakes from 1932, all with slightly different action. Wow . . . does that mean that, even in 1932, Universal was vaulting outtakes like that for future use?  That must have been a heck of an editorial resource.

Weaver tells me that Scripts from the Crypt books are on their way for other sequels in Universal’s 1940s Mummy series . . . now he’s making me want to see them again.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Sage movie biz observer Joe Dante has been distributing interesting links about AI and the Writer’s strike, but also items about older video issues. I like this one a lot — it reminds me of a discussions back in 1984, after watching a miserable colorized VHS tape of Topper . . . and later, trying to figure out why Ray Harryhausen authorized the colorization of his four B&W Columbia Dynamation pix. There’s also the depressing precedent of the colorized It’s a Wonderful Life.  ↑ It plastered the same smeary sort-of-colors over the noir-stylized segment, that were imposed on the rest of the movie.

It turns out that Ted Turner was a booster of the process. The big quote here is ‘I own the movies, I can do whatever I want with them.’ At that time we were still naíve enough to believe that old movies were sacred, a part of our heritage, and that movie history was about more than just $$money$$. Turner was basically saying that, if he felt like it, he could dump movies he didn’t like in the ocean. What if a Saudi Arabian company were to purchase the MGM-RKO library — and then destroyed all the films that offend their specific ethnic-religious-cultural prejudices?

Writer Jake Rosson’s Mental Floss article presents a more basic argument: Colorizers: When Ted Turner and Hollywood Clashed Over Colorizing Classic Movies.

What a surprise!  The nicest things happen when you don’t expect them. Out of the blue Saturday morning Gary Teetzel forwarded the news that Vinegar Syndrome was up online with a full announcement of a  Gorgo Ultra HD / Blu-ray.

We expected to read that the date for release would be ‘this fall’ or ‘2024.’  Nope, unless there’s some mistake, we’re fixated on the page’s message: Ships Later This Month. It could be weeks away — what a treat. That beats waiting 1-2 years for CineColor Martians and furry 3-D invaders.

The 2013 Blu-ray had some serious issues, and was greatly appreciated anyway. Vinegar Syndrome’s 4K Promo Trailer shows quite an improvement in video quality. The stack of 4K frame captures on the announcement page make the new encoding seem even more impressive — that wide shot of Piccadilly Circus is as dark and dramatic as we remember it — and not green.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

A Happy 4th of July to everyone … and an explanation.

CineSavant is ready with new reviews and announcements ready to post, but we’re waiting for Trailers from Hell to complete a server re-shuffle that started yesterday — their own new trailer for Monday was delayed as well. At the moment (9:40 am Pacific Time) the entire page is still frozen. I guess this will give me a chance to read over all of my text once again.

If things work out, this interim announcement won’t be up long. Trailers From Hell is a complex site, and the experts maintaining it are very precise.

Lets hope we all end the day with as many fingers we started with. Cheers, Glenn

Hello!

Dependable, ever-searching Gary Teetzel has sent a very welcome link to yet another ’50s TV show of considerable import — to those whose interests fold in with our own.

Four years prior to TV’s first iteration of The Twilight Zone, the anthology series Studio 57 presented a 30-minute adaptation of Richard Matheson’s short story Shipshape Home. Written for television by Lawrence Kimble, it became Matheson’s very first TV credit.

The original story features a janitor described as looking like Peter Lorre, so Studio 57 got the real deal to essay the part. Married actors Barbara Hale and Bill Williams also star, and future Count Yorga Robert Quarry appears as a family friend. The first half plays like a sitcom, and then the unusual twists start arriving . . .

After some searching, co-investigator Darren Gross decided that this web encoding at The Internet Archive looks the best:  Studio 57: Young Couples Only.

We’ve also just learned about Tom Weaver’s latest ‘Scripts from the Crypt’ book, this one dedicated to the 1940 Universal picture The Mummy’s Hand.

The Bear Manor publication is a fairly hefty item, 316 pages that contain the original shooting script plus copious production notes and articles by Weaver and his associates Laura Wagner, Gary D. Rhodes, Gregory Mank, Rich Scrivani, Bob Koster & Frank Dello Stritto. I’m hoping to be able to review it soon, here at the CineSavant Column.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

A Few Words about ‘Where’d the COMMENTS go? . . .’

… in particular, the Trailers from Hell comments section … which is presently disabled. I am informed that it has been dropped for technical reasons and not because it wasn’t wanted. Some readers asked where it went. The answer I got was something about bandwidth; apparently some other things were trimmed as well.

No Angry Mob has formed as of yet. ( green image just above ↑ )

I can’t say I’m destroyed by this. Much more meaningful to me is my Email correspondence, which contributes more to the feeling that our Hard Work Ain’t Been In Vain for Nothing. It’s also much more fun interacting with an identifiable person instead of reacting to one-way communication from someone using an alias. I rush to read CineSavant email. Many readers are better informed than I am, and their corrections and advise are much appreciated. I can also quote them for CineSavant Columns — they send in fun links I’d never find on my own.

So, no, CineSavant didn’t shut down comments. I just enjoy being an overpriviliged guest at the Trailers from Hell site. Note that every CineSavant page and review has a blurb saying ‘Glenn Erickson answers most reader mail.’ The email link works. We welcome new information, comments, corrections, gripes, and whatever comes to mind.

Photo Study: The Legendary Malibu Beach House

Next up is a short photo article. We’ve always been fascinated by the lonely Malibu beach house seen at the conclusion of Robert Aldrich’s 1955 Kiss Me Deadly, the one that now resembles a mythical ‘House at the End of the World.’  It’s got the same vibe as the eerie death house at the conclusion of Robert Siodmak’s Criss Cross, with an added atomic kicker. Along with Arch Oboler’s FIVE, Kiss Me Deadly cemented the association of a lonely stretch of Malibu Beach with an apocalyptic ground zero. That’s where Spartacus ends up when his rebellion reaches the End of the Line, with nowhere else to go. For Rock Hudson in John Frankenheimer’s Seconds, Malibu is a false escape into a trendy but illusory paradise . . . you know, California.

The finale had the house blasted with atomic fire, an ironic reversal that pulls the rug out from under Ralph Meeker’s cocksure tough guy Mike Hammer. But Aldrich resurrected it for the finish of his 1962 What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, where critics theorized that Aldrich was suggesting a different kind of bleak ‘psychological apocalypse.’ ↓

In practical terms it’s more likely that Aldrich found the location convenient and economical. It could be controlled without hiring an army of security people. And there’s a tall hill right behind the house, for dramatic down-angled shots.

But the legendary beach house appeared in one, maybe two films before Kiss Me Deadly. We suspect but are not sure that part of it is shown at the conclusion of 1954’s Loophole, directed by Harold D. Schuster. But the house very clearly seen in, of all things, Roger Corman’s The Fast and the Furious starring John Ireland and Dorothy Malone. ↑  Corman’s second full-on producing effort was his first for the company that would become American-International Pictures. A patchwork wonder, it intercuts footage shot on a winding road in Griffith Park with a lot of work on a Rear-Projection process stage. Paying the bill for the process work likely influenced Corman to avoid using RP again, unless absolutely necessary.

The story is a trifle about a crook (John Ireland) using a car race to make an escape from the police. Near the finish Ireland’s Frank Webster is racing South along the Pacific coastline. To continue he must run a roadblock at the U.S. / Mexico border. That’s where Ireland’s Jaguar passes the legendary beach house, repurposed as a ‘U.S. Customs’ building.  ↑ We note that the border crossing doesn’t even fly an American flag. With weeds growing in the carport, we wonder if the house was unoccupied for some reason. There’s certainly a lack of close neighbors — it’s way out at the far end of Malibu, very near Point Dume.

↑  Here’s a frame from Kiss Me Deadly showing the same carport. The house’s trim displays the ‘X motif’ that’s prominent throughout the movie — did Aldrich go looking for a good beach house, see the ‘X’s, and seize on the visual serendipity?  Or did the art director add them, to maintain the visual theme?  In the same shot we note that the road does seem to be paved, but is mostly covered with sand. In the TFATF footage we see similar hints of a paved roadway.

↑  ↓  Here are two RP shots of John Ireland driving past the house in question. Ocean-adjacent, it’s a very sandy place. Maybe there IS a paved lane under the sand.

A couple of hundred yards South of the house, the final angle appears to represent the Mexican side of the border crossing. ↓  It’s a pure Corman invention — one guard, no flag, and a crossing gate that looks like some random lathe slats tacked together ten minutes before filming. The actor playing the guard might be holding the gate, to steady it against a stiff shore breeze. He also looks like he’s holding a hammer — as if he just finished making the gate himself.

Every time a movie shows scenes on what looks like Malibu Beach we pay attention. A helpful page called Movie Tourist has a gallery of Kiss Me Deadly locations, most of which fell to redevelopment in the 1960s. Movie Tourist identifies the Beach House only as being ‘on Westward Beach Road near Point Dume, Malibu.’

Sometime in the 1960s or early 1970s, the Beach House disappeared as well. It may have had something to do with the work of The California Costal Commission. I learned about the subject while working on the movie “1941” — the Spielberg movie constructed Ned Beatty’s two-story ‘Dagwood Bumstead’ beach house in Malibu, on a flat surf-adjacent Trancas Beach lot that had long been abandoned. ↓  A.D. Flowers’ effects crew rigged the whole house to slide over a cliff onto the beach sand. The incredible super-gag — it had to work the first time — was really something to behold.

I don’t know the specific politics involved, but ‘1941’ made use of an entire little neighborhood had been reclaimed by the state and razed. Nothing was left but flat pads where the houses had been. The location manager said that one blank lot had been a former home of Vincent Price, something I never confirmed. Was the lonely Kiss Me Deadly house constructed before the zoning rights had been established?  Or did eminent domain step in and change the game?  Whatever happened, the Commission has done a good job protecting the natural coastline along Point Dume. The last couple of miles up the coast from Malibu to Oxnard remain a refreshing & relaxing drive, with nary a house nor a McDonalds in sight.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Readers have been sending in odd links in the billion-bubble wake of our review of Robot Monster. This short film, a fragment really, is by Matthew Muhl. It’s insubstantial but amusing, and I liked its tone: Man or Ro-Man, The Phil Tucker Story.

It looks like it might have been a teaser for a longer project?  I liked the simplicity and clarity of the ‘curtain’ shot above, even if that red curtain looks like an off-the-shelf graphic.

I’ve been hearing about The Primevals for a full 45 years, as a close friend of its original co-writer and its original editor. I was also somewhat of a hanger-on during its first production effort — way back when 1941 was being shot. Set aside long ago, and then taken up as a labor of love by a couple of dedicated stop-motion animator-filmmakers, the Charles Band production The Primevals looks to have found a final form.

I’ve seen bits of footage for it, piecemeal, over several decades. Someone did a great job on this festival promo, just up on the web a few days ago. Seeing actors Juliet Mills and Robert Cornthwaite is certainly refreshing, as is the fun of genuine old-school stop-motion animation. Original director David Allen has been gone over twenty years; even back then he was referring to stop-motion as a Lost Art.

It looks pretty good. This link should land you into the middle of a Full Moon promo reel, to the new The Primevals Video Promo.

Here’s a ‘best of’ list that’s actually worth reading. It is compiled, with interesting comments, by critic J. Hoberman, for The New Republic”  The 100 Most Significant Political Films of All Time distills a century of political film into 100 powerful titles.

CineSavant normally shrinks from list-making . . . I can’t even assemble a list of my own favorites. I also reject knee-jerk criticism that denigrates something like Costa-Gavras’ “Z” because it puts Message ahead of Art. So many titles here are driven to Speak Truth to Power. The many brilliant entries are some of the best films ever . . . with a message. Mr. Hoberman’s assessment of ‘significant’ has always been a rewarding read. He knows how to say a lot in two sentences, and his comments are never heavy-handed.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson