Hello, and Happy D-Day!

Anybody out there hiding old home movies in their closet, from when we were teenagers and were convinced we’d all become film directors?

This link to a disc release on the way was circulated by Joe Dante, who added the cogent comment, “I sure hope nobody uncovers MY student films!”

The link is to a Blu-ray offering of The Adam Rifkin Film Festival, the director’s compilation of his own potentially humiliating teen-amateur pix, all preserved for posterity. Either he’s just honest and forthcoming, or this is part of a restitution deal he’s made to get into heaven . . . that’s what it would take to get me to show everything I filmed back in the Bad Teen Home Movie capital of the world, San Bernardino, California. Hey, no fair, I made a film called ‘Armageddon’ too … The website has an amusing video sampler attached.

I’ve begun digitizing my old 8mm and Super 8 pix; the biggest problem is when the 60 year-old tape splices, not done very well to begin with, fall apart in the digitizer. But hey, there were a couple of images I wasn’t ashamed of, that I posted here — although the film in question was really from my college dorm, not my teen years.  ↓

Way back in 2005 I reviewed a DVD release called Monster Kid Home Movies, a compilation of 8mm fun from the likes of Bob Burns, Gary Gammill, Frank Dietz and (gasp) Tom Weaver. Who says that All You Need to Make a Movie is a Girl and a Gun?  The subject matter here is rubber monster masks and claymation dinosaurs, filmed mostly in back yards. The disc producer was Joe Busam, who afterwards invited me to send in one of MY home movies. Boy, did that throw a scare into me — you’d think I was going to be sent to prison. These guys have more nerve than me.

 

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And we follow up with what at the CineSavant Column passes for a gala photo feature!

Researcher & Advisor Gary Teetzel sent along these images from the Monsterpalooza convention over the weekend. He always comes back with interesting items, and the most fun is seeing him pose with every celebrity on the planet — any actress that takes her picture with him, goes up a few notches in my esteem. They all seem to be having as much fun as Gary, too.

 

←  Anyway, this time around one of Gary’s snaps was of a Monsterpalooza display with an  Invaders from Mars  theme. That of course got my attention . . . I love those big velour Mutants, that always looked as if they could have been called The Invasion of the Pajama People, from the planet Sleepytime.   I rather expected this bruiser to be more greenish in color, but who’s complaining?

 

→  Number two is not a miniature of the ancient Aurora Frankenstein plastic model kit, but a full-sized figure with giant props, like the oversized Testors paint bottle and glue tube. Fooled me; I kind of wish that something normal-sized was in the photo, to show its real scale.

←  Number three is a pair of Cosplay folk, their theme being Creepshow. They look great to me; Gary has a whole history of bizarre outfits, makeups, etc., in his convention Cosplay photo history.

↓  According to Gary’s notes the last photo is a full diorama in bronze, of Ray Harryhausen directing the Cyclops & Dragon fight from 7th Voyage of Sinbad.

All 4 of these photos can be enlarged quite a bit, either zoomed or opened in a new window.

 

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Guy Rolf is in a tough spot. Is he paralyzed by a menacing King Cobra, or the approach of (gasp) Marie Devereux?

 

Hello!

The ever-searching Gary Teetzel has come up with a good one — a YouTube encoding of a vintage English Public Service Spot featuring a welcome celebrity host. As Gary explains:

“Here’s a rarity — a 1946 short subject about road safety, with Peter Cushing addressing the audience as a doctor. His contribution starts about 90 seconds in or so. We expect him to return at the end, but he doesn’t.”

It Might Be You

It’s 14 minutes of ‘quality’ filmmaking. A young Alfie Bass is present as well. Cushing’s delivery and voiceover is as polished as ever. Gary’s further comment includes some close observation of the actor’s voice:

“Gee, if they had waited another ten years or so, Peter Cushing could have played the part as Baron Frankenstein, and encouraged the audience to get into accidents to provide him with more spare body parts. But we notice right away that Cushing’s voice is a little different here; it sounds a little thinner, and his diction lacks the crispness and theatricality he would use when playing aristocratic characters like Baron Frankenstein, Van Helsing or Grand Moff Tarkin. It’s maybe just a choice he made as an actor, but consider: The very next year Cushing gets cast in the film Hamlet, and afterward is invited to tour with Laurence Olivier. So I wouldn’t be surprised if Cushing’s crisp, precise, British theatrical diction was polished during his year or so of touring with Sir Larry & Viv.”

 

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We’re definitely playing disc review catch up at CineSavant, with May’s offerings to cover and more good discs arriving every day. In hand and either being written or in the hopper is a tall stack of titles, in no particular order: The boxed set Mexico Macabre: Four Sinister Tales from the Alameda Films Vault 1959-1963; Alexandr Ptushko’s The Tale of Tsar Saltan; Cecil B. DeMille’s The Crusades; the naughty pre-Code Search for Beauty; Fritz Lang’s Kurt Weill drama You and Me; Raoul Walsh’s The Strawberry Blonde and A Lion is In the Streets; Seijun Suzuki’s Branded to Kill; Marcel Ophuls’ Occupation documentary The Sorrow and the Pity.

The bounty continues with the new remasters of Max Fleischer’s Superman 1941-1943 animated cartoons; the boxed set From Hollywood to Heaven the Lost and Saved films of the Ormond Family; Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise 4K; Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter 4K; Max Ophuls’ There’s No Tomorrow (Sans lendermain), Robert Aldrich’s Hustle and The Longest Yard 4K; the Anna May Wong Collection, René Clément’s Joy House (Les félins); and three full Film Noir the Dark Side of Cinema collections: XII, XIII and XIV.

For June, we are expecting the earlier restored pre-Code Safe in Hell and are eagerly awaiting Otto Preminger’s Angel Face; Eleanor Parker in Caged; Joan Crawford in The Damned Don’t Cry; Howard Hawks’ Land of the Pharaohs; and John Sturges The Old Man and the Sea.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Still a legit message for Memorial Day, even as we honor our fallen.

 

Hello!

First off today is a link from CineSavant cohort Charlie Largent to an announcement from ClassicFlix of an upcoming release of episodes of the old 1959 Sci-fi TV show World of Giants, starring Marshall Thompson and Arthur Franz. I really never saw these when they were new; only 13 were produced.

The series directors seemed to be chosen for similar sci-fi subject matter — Jack Arnold, Nathan Juran, Harry Horner. The guest cast lists may not be stellar, but I wouldn’t mind checking out Peggie Castle, Allison Hayes, Ziva Rodann, Berry Kroeger, Gregg Palmer, Brett Halsey, Pamela Duncan, Nestor Paiva and the late Gavin McLeod.

The ClassicFlix announcement includes clips from a pair of episodes, “Chemical Story” and “Special Agent.”

 

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Just up on the ‘silly toy’ news front is Wayne Schmidt’s link to The BigBadToyStore and its offering of a
Robot Monster Ro-Man 15-Inch Deluxe Plush, actually offered by a company called Hoptoys. The toy is halfway accurate, and just what one needs when contemplating the upcoming 3-D Blu-ray release of the original film, now scheduled for July 25.

It says the helmet comes off to reveal a skull-face underneath, which connects to the Robot Monster’s original poster, not anything in the film itself.

I checked out the rest of the toy inventory, which mostly seems to be figurines of comic book characters, although a few film items pop through. I got as far as page 8, where the Biblical figures begin !

 

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Eddie Muller has some surprises coming up on his Noir Alley TCM show Saturday nights in June and July. Four of the shows are familiar items from existing collections: the police thriller Between Midnight and Dawn, Anthony Mann’s Desperate, Andrew Stone’s Doris Day thriller Julie, and Day’s Klan exposé thriller Storm Warning, due soon on Blu-ray.

Going forward the titles are less familiar. We’ve seen Don Siegel’s debut picture The Verdict and don’t remember it well. The same goes for Arthur Lubin’s Impact, a show that left no impression despite having an exceptional cast: Ella Raines, Helen Walker — and Anna Mae Wong.

We’re also interested in finding out what Eddie has to say about Douglas Sirk’s Shockproof, a movie turned inside-out in post, a complicated story for sure.

The last two are real surprises. I wasn’t really aware of the unseen Flaxy Martin by Richard Bare. Another show that’s evaded me forever is another July offering, Jean Negulesco’s Deep Valley with Ida Lupino and Dane Clark. I hope it’s worth the wait. Muller’s intros and ‘extros’ are so good that I watch them even when I skip the movies themselves, as with last week’s The Fallen Sparrow . . . no, Maureen O’Hara doesn’t fare too well in a classic noir situation.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

There is always the memory of dark theaters and those great candy counters . . .

 

Hello!

Yes, it’s true, we have no new disc reviews today. For the entire month of May CineSavant has had but one review per posting. This is because we’ve been far from home. As you can see just above, I haven’t been suffering for scenery. Southern California is terrific in many ways but it is also a desert, and after various droughts our trees are in pretty sad shape, even many of the most resilient. At our destination — can anybody guess where — I had a solid month of staring at the greenest, healthiest-looking trees I’ve seen in years.

CineSavant was supposed to be 100% back in action last Tuesday, but we had to overstay our trip a full week — so the fallback plan is to be fully functional this next Tuesday, May 30, the day after Memorial Day. The house sitters have been piling up all the mail, including discs to be reviewed. Charlie Largent and I will be attacking that stack of movies as soon as we can get our mitts on them.

Until then, I asked Charlie and our co-reviewer Lee Broughton to pick some CineSavant reviews of which they were most proud, that they thought turned out well. I’ve added a few more. Maybe you don’t remember some of these. In any event, here’s a list of OLDER REVIEWS WORTHY OF A LOOK-SEE. That’s in addition to the old autobiographical DVD Savant article linked from the featured image at the top of the day’s post. Thanks!

 

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Glenn Erickson reviews  Hercules in the Haunted World October 12, 2019

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Charlie Largent reviews   The Brain From Planet Arous  June 28, 2022

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Glenn Erickson reviews   Gorath  March 30, 2021

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Charlie Largent reviews  Pink Flamingos  July 16 2022

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Glenn Erickson reviews  The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse  June 3, 2020

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Lee Broughton reviews  The Specialists  June 20, 2020

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Charlie Largent reviews  The Jetsons: The Complete Series  October 19, 2019 

Glenn Erickson reviews  The Great Escape 4K  December 27, 2021

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Charlie Largent reviews   The Cat and the Canary & The Ghost Breakers  September 19, 2020

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Glenn Erickson reviews  Until the End of the World  November 30, 2019 

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And Gary Teetzel sends along two more links he’s gathered up for us. The company SRS Cinema has announced that it is going to release a Blu-ray of a little-known Japanese film with elaborate practical and miniature effects, the 1962 thriller The Whale God. It’s not a Kaiju per se but more like a variation on Moby Dick, about the vengeful pursuit of an unusually large whale that has a habit of killing off the members of a particular family.

It was produced by Daiei; the key interest for Kaiju fans is the presence of actor Takashi Shimura, and also the music score by Akira Ifukube. Full details and a Japanese trailer are posted at the Sci-Fi Japan page: SRS Catches the Daiei Thriller The Whale God.

 

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And as a parting shot, Gary also forwards this link to a highly unusual trailer — one of the weirdest ever. Is it actually a trailer, or a piece of film to be grafted on to prints of the movie it is advertising, to extend the running time by two minutes?  It explains itself clearly enough. We wonder if it might have been inspired by the screwball trailer Alfred Hitchcock made for the same year’s Psycho. Here you have it:

An important warning from The Information Service.

Gary Teetzel says we should be grateful that the ever-vigilant Information Service is on the job, 24-7.  Thanks for reading!  Glenn Erickson

Remembering Gregory Jein and Douglas Trumbull, both gone this last year.

 

Hello!

I got carried away with little music video clips, after last Saturday’s rediscovery of the Kessler Twins’ ’Scopitone’ in a better transfer. I looked up two other Italian items from European star Silvana Mangano, who made her big splash as a sex symbol in 1947’s Bitter Rice. It looks like she trimmed down her weight a bit for a hit 1950 Italo show called Anna, where she sang and danced to a monster Euro hit song El negro zumbón. Directorially speaking the little musical number is a mess — it cuts two takes together that don’t even begin to match. But Mangano‘s performance is minimalist-brilliant, ten years ahead of its time — all small delicate moves that are less dancing than bopping to the music — in her simple little beach outfit, Silvana seems VERY modern and ultra-stylish.

 

 

And that of course leads me to another Silvana Mangano music clip, from about 16 years later. She plays a movie star goaded into a little performance at an exclusive party, in the Luchino Visconti episode of the omnibus movie The Witches. This clip is also in a much-improved transfer.

The music is by Piero Piccioni, not Ennio Morricone, as I once thought. Visconti concentrates on Silvana’s dance moves. Much of the rest of The Witches is not as good, even an episode with Clint Eastwood. But here Ms. Mangano once again wins out with sheer stylishness: The Chalet dance in The Witches.

 

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A new release from Flicker Alley merits our attention. 1927 was when the great Laurel & Hardy became a comedy duo, and the fact that copyrights have expired on most films from that year would seem to have prompted this two-disc collection of the first year of their official collaboration. That insight was gleaned from John McElwee’s Greenbriar Picture Shows article from May 15.

Flicker Alley’s notice describes the collected films as restored from copies found in multiple archives. Blackhawk Films and France’s Lobster Films partnered in the project, officially listed as Laurel & Hardy: Year One, The Newly Restored 1927 Silents. The tally is 13 short subjects and two earlier collaborations: Lucky Dog (1921), 45 Minutes from Hollywood (1926), Duck Soup (1927), Slipping Wives (1927), Love ‘em and Weep (1927), Why Girls Love Sailors (1927), With Love and Hisses (1927), Sugar Daddies (1927), Sailors, Beware! (1927), The Second 100 Years (1927), Call of the Cuckoo (1927), Do Detectives Think? (1927), Putting Pants on Phillip (1927), The Battle of the Century (1927), and Flying Elephants (1928).

I’ve only seen (and loved) Laurel & Hardy piecemeal, so this organized re-introduction to the duo will be a special treat. They are all silents, of course. Each has been given a musical accompaniment, from Neil Brand, Antonio Coppola, Eric le Guen, and Donald Sosin. The extras are extensive, including a commentary track for each picture. The street date is listed as July 25.

Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson

Would it have been more acceptable in color? We still think it’s hilarious.