CineSavant Column
Hello!
Dick Dinman’s final DVD Classics Corner On the Air podcast for 2024 is up; this time around he’s covering the Criterion disc of Howard Hawks’ Scarface with critic and author Joseph McBride.
Also on the episode’s discussion docket are Criterion’s recent discs of Pandora’s Box, Paper Moon and the Val Lewton double bill. Here’s looking forward to 2025, Dick!
We at CineSavant are constantly calling out voice talent (and actor) Paul Frees, whose voice is heard so often in 1950s films, he must have been working every day. He’s all over George Pal’s pictures, and has an on-screen part in the original The War of the Worlds. He narrates uncounted Disney shows and does odd voices for monster movies; his tone can be intelligent and authoritative or outright creepy. Once you’ve pegged Frees’ particular sound, he pops up everywhere. The over-use part came to a head with 1960’s Spartacus, where it seems that every random offscreen senator or soldier is Frees … it’s actually distracting.
The ominous creepy Frees horror story read can be heard at this YouTube excerpt, the audio prologue to Burn, Witch, Burn. The visuals are not from the original movie, nor is the ending joke (which I didn’t know was there at first, honest).
Haven’t memorized Paul Frees’s voice? Contributor Michael McQuarrie sends along an Internet Archive link to 5 radio spots for what has become Frees’s most famous gig — recording all of the creep-out audio bites for Disneyland’s original Haunted Mansion ride. The versatile Frees even provides the voice for ‘Granny Ghoul’ in radio spot #3.
Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson