Hello!

Producer and all-round inspiration Michael Arick sent along this great link, to a new YouTube video feature by Mathieu Stern, produced with the Atlas Lens Company.

In beautiful video coverage, we see Monsieur Stern unpacking an original CinemaScope adaptor, loaned to him by a Disney Museum, from its original 1954 box. We get a quick history of how Walt Disney produced the sensational film  20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in ‘Scope when Bausch & Lomb only had a handful of lenses, initial versions that had to be separately focused from the prime 35mm lens. The lens itself weighed 25 pounds, and it had to be adapted to an underwater rig.

Mathieu finds a way to mount the old C’Scope adapter to a modern video camera, and shows us some experimental images he filmed – at the 2:55 ratio — in the Paris aquarium. It’s a very nice thought-piece about the daring days of Disney filmmaking, with old film clips and handsome new shots.

Repeated thanks to the unsinkable Michael McQuarrie, who has sent along a brief but interesting ‘location comparison’ article for everyone favorite film about invading Gargons, Tom Graeff’s  Teenagers from Outer Space. It’s on a page by Showbiz Imagery and Forgotten History.

For us types living near Hollywood, the movie really throws us — all of the locations look very familiar. The page doesn’t show locations that are easier to spot: one scene uses the main building of Hollywood High School. I think some of these locations are around Whitley Terrace, the hill bisected by the Hollywood Freeway, right where Hollywood goes into the Cahuenga Pass. One shot of a tunnel is just above Franklin Avenue. I think it goes under the Hollywood Freeway … or had that section of the freeway even been completed by when Teenagers was filmed?

I’ve copied one of the comparison shots, just above. It’s a view looking South down Las Palmas from Hollywood Boulevard. The shuttered wall on the right is what’s left of the old open-air Las Palmas newsstand that I once thought would be there forever. I include it here because this exact same view shows up often in old movies. The most notable is the famed film noir  Gun Crazy. The first thing that armed robbers John Dall and Peggy Cummins do in Los Angeles, is to jump from the car to look at a newspaper. That iconic church building is prominent in the shot.

Just remember to beware of “thrill-crazed space kids blasting the flesh off humans.”

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

This week marks the debut of what will surely be a promising new feature at Trailers from Hell — a ‘video column’ from director, sage and TFH uber-guru Allan Arkush.

Whether taking about film, music or TV, Arkush has always been a gotta-like raconteur; we’ve checked out all of his older TFH video blogs. Contributing more inside insight and wisdom, the first ‘episode’ of The Last Reel With Allan Arkush is a mini-essay on the old-fashioned moviegoing experience, with a tour of the theater offerings to be had in Hollywood back in the early 1970s, when Arkush first came to town.

Some of the video column was filmed on site … I think ace film editor Arkush may be creating it himself. Episode One’s title is, You Still Going to the Movies?

And correspondent “B” comes ups with a column item that we at first thought was a gag — a link to an article about an unsold pilot for a TV series based on the Billy Wilder movie  Some Like It Hot.

The article is by Mark Evanier on his ‘News From Me’ page. The pilot TV show was made in 1961, didn’t sell and then disappeared just like dozens of other failed pilots adapted from popular movies.

The weird thing here is that stars Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon help launch the pilot, playing their characters from the movie. After one scene, they are transformed into actors Vic Damone and Dick Patterson.

Sounds like a big mistake, or a rumor waiting to be disproven. But the pilot is real …. Mark Evanier’s article contains a link, so we can all see it for ourselves …

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

We start off with something interesting courtesy of a circulated link from Joe Dante.

It’s a new Guardian article by Dalya Alberge about a film Charles Chaplin was actively working on when he died in 1977. Its screenplay is reportedly going to be published.

The biggest hint in the article is that the film is “a fantasy about “Sarapha, a beautiful creature with wings, a bird with a human body, which has the power to cure illness and bring peace to the world.”

I say bring it on for real.

Another un-filmed movie project associated with Charles Chaplin has already been published, in a book dealing with critic/screenwriter James Agee. It’s a full script for an ‘atom war’ idea that Agee hoped Chaplin would film. This was in the late 1940s, just before Chaplin went into exile.

The ‘lost screenplay’ is printed in Wrankovics’ book Chaplin and Agee. The balance of the book is about Agee’s efforts to rescue Chaplin from the cultural lynch mob that tarred him both a pervert and an anti-American Red.

And long-time correspondent Lee Kaplan contributes something very pleasing, a clip to a terrific animated short subject that will get us in a good mood for El dí de los muertos. Without words, it defines the meaning of a Day of the Dead holiday altar.

It’s a brief man & dog story by … Victoria México?  An early title card that appears on the video is Xolo, defined as a breed of Mexican dog. It was a sacred animal for the Aztecs, full name Xoloitzcuintle.

The film is very touching, and very much in keeping with the sentimental, positive meaning of the holiday. Dog lovers uninterested in the feline epic Flow may be charmed.

And you .. Who is waiting for you? … take me to the river…

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

It’s that time of year again. Here are three desirable Halloween discs worthy of special note . . . one comes out today.

Radiance Films is promising, on October 25, a newly remastered Blu-ray of Malpertius, from director Harry Kümel of  Daughters of Darkness. It’s a wholly weird picture with a special performance by Orson Welles. A sailor returns home (sort of) to find a strange group of people living his uncle’s house, apparently waiting for the bedridden man to die. The identity of the ‘visitors’ turns out to be something utterly fantastic. Radiance’s extras promise to be something special.

It will arrive a tad after Halloween, but Arrow Video USA has our curiosity up with a 4K remaster of Peter Hyams’ Outland, a futuristic drama with Sean Connery and Peter Boyle. Something’s gone wrong at a mining colony on a moon of Jupiter, and ‘space marshal’ Connery is dispatched to sort it out. Back in the day, we were interested in Outland because it used a ‘new process’ involving miniatures and front projection. We’ve only seen it on cable TV so will be interested to see what it looks like in 4K.

And The Warner Archive Collection has clearly been watching what Hammer Films is up to with their fancy giant boxed sets of vintage Hammer titles. This initial Technicolor Hammer hit The Curse of Frankenstein was remastered by the WAC back in 2020, but we’re about to behold a full-on new restoration, with two 4K discs and one Blu-ray, with multiple aspect ratios and an enormous roster of video extras.

It’s a favorite that few will pass up … could Horror of Dracula be next?  If the WAC mirrors Hammer’s presumed release for that one, it could conceivably give American viewers a good look at the extended Japanese cut of the film.

We normally link to MovieZyng for WAC releases, but I didn’t find a page there for this disc.

From correspondent and advisor Gary Teetzel comes a quick lesson on the Persistence of Unadulterated BS in vintage Hollywood promotions. It’s one of Gary’s articles made from strings of old Trade Paper notices. Gary:

If you’ve seen posters or lobby cards for Bert I. Gordon’s THE BOY AND THE PIRATES, you may have noticed that the film was promoted as being in “Perceptovision”:

Unsurprisingly, “Perceptovision” was nothing but a name Gordon decided to slap onto his own familiar brand of special effects. One can imagine Gordon seeing Columbia’s exciting announcements declaring Ray Harryhausen’s films as being in “Dynamation” and “SuperDynamation.” B.I. Gordon must have decided to hype his own visual effects in a similar way.

From the February 29, 1960 FILM BULLETIN, here’s some United Artists hype promising that Perceptovision was a “new concept in special effects”:

From Mel Konecoff’s “The New York Scene” column in the March 2 issue of MOTION PICTURE EXHIBITOR, here’s Gordon promising that Perceptovision had been “perfected”:

The FILM BULLETIN review claims Perceptovision to be a patented process (or, as the typo puts it, a “pantentel” process):

Sadly, as far as I can tell, Gordon never went on to invent and perfect “SuperPerceptiovision.” — Gary

‘Perceptovision’ my a–!   It is indeed a very ‘special’ process — if you can perceive it, you’re having visions!

Frankly, we’re Shocked! Shocked! to discover that advertising baloney was an important factor in promoting motion pictures!  We promo editors never fudged the truth back at Cannon Films … (cough). Our only takeaway from Gary’s exposé is to wonder how producer-director William Castle reacted when he got wind of Bert I. Gordon’s special process. Just the year before, Castle promoted his very successful thriller The Tingler with a genuine special presentation gimmick, called simply, ‘Percepto.’

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

The world is full of awful, dreadful, just plain Bad news … but we happily appropriate a link distributed by the illustrious David J. Schow, all about bad things happening at Disneyland.

Sometimes we ask ourselves if we have a morbid streak, or if we just like Charles Addams cartoons. I’m an easy-going guy who doesn’t hold a grudge, yet I grumble each New Years’ day when inclement skies suddenly turn Kodak-perfect for our local Rose Bowl Parade in Pasadena. Can’t there be one January 1st where we can see expensive corporate floats blown to flinders by a typhoon, raining rose petals all over Southern California?

I digress. The article Schow has found is a dutiful tabulation of disaster at Disneyland, once the ‘happiest place on Earth’ for all, but that now is affordable only for households that control a six-figure salary. At ‘MapQuest Travel,’ writer Kevin Saltarelli enumerates 13 highly unlucky events that Dalt Wizzy’s Magic Kingdom suffered over time.

There are some truly sad cases, as there have been several fatal accidents at Disneyland. The article isn’t sleazy …. it just can’t help but appeal to normal curiosity. For example, the title for entry #7 simply reads Don’t Sneak into Disneyland.   Another is about the less lethal effect of listening too long to the song “It’s a Small World.”  Who can resist that?

Again, we’re not trying to be sadistic here, but when visiting the park, our thoughts did wander at times … nothing can be made absolutely safe.

Meanwhile, over at The Film Noir Foundation …

the new issue of Noir City, Issue number 23, is available. It’s accessible at the bottom of the Film Noir Foundation Page. The articles this time around are of special interest.

Jake Hinkson examines the notion of the ‘Southern Noir Gothic’ film, as represented by pictures like  The Story of Temple Drake. We also get a good article by Danilo Castro about the legendary stunt driver Bill Hickman, the ‘star’ of Bullitt who was closely linked to the fatal end of James Dean.

Oren Shai looks in on the French noir films of actor-director Robert Hossein. Finally, it’s about time that sometbody got around to the cheapie crime pix of Sam Katzman … Rachel Walther exposes all of those ‘city expose’ pictures.

Linsey Ford profiles the movie career of Peter Lorre. Ben Terrall compares the book and movie of  Devil In a Blue Dress, and Christian Gutierrez examines a classic Mexican film that edges toward the definition of film noir. Finally, we always go for the reviews of critic Sean Axmaker. Each issue of Noir City is a compendium of the latest thinking on the world of noir.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson