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Here’s a fun link — Craig Reardon notes that it’s a few months old, but if you missed it, it’s worth a peek. It’s a 1989 CBS This Morning interview via a TV hookup that unites Adam West, Julie Newmar, Cesar Romero and Burgess Meredith, to spend several minutes hashing over the old Batman TV series. When the new Tim Burton movie is brought up, Romero remarks in gentlemanly fashion, “I understand Jack Nicholson is fantastic as the Joker!” whereupon Meredith snipes, “Well, that’s too bad…”  Ha!

They all look good but then again it’s 1989, thirty years ago. The CBS host entreats Burgess Meredith to do the ‘Penguin’ quack, and he eventually does, but not before complaining, “Well, at these prices…” Romero says he hears the new movie ‘is too violent for kids,’ while Newmar notes that her Catwoman was ‘wicked,’ not ‘evil.’  That would be a good distinction to make at impeachment hearings, maybe.

And Gary Teetzel connects us to two links of interest. The first is a Movie-Censorship.com censorship comparison page of the European Lycanthropus and its American recut Werewolf in a Girl’s Dormitory. It’s pretty thorough, has frame grabs and includes a mini-review; they like the Severin discs that we reviewed here at CineSavant back on November 5.

The second Teetzel steer is to an ‘eventbrite’ page for a pair of concerts to be held at Los Angeles’ Autry Museum of the American West on January 24 & 25, entitled The Music of Elmer Bernstein. Gary reports: “The website plays up his western scores, To Kill a Mockingbird, Ghostbusters etc. but one insider says that some lesser-known works will also be featured, including music from the immortal Robot Monster. I’ll spare readers the CineSavant message chain of Robot Monster jokes that ensued. Well, almost: we hope the conductor will don a gorilla suit, and someone will crank up the ol’ Billion Bubble Machine to really capture that unique Ro-Man nostalgia. Or was someone just kidding about the concert including Bernstein’s ‘lesser-known’ film scores?

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

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The key artwork for this Abbott & Costello movie can be opened larger, in a new window. Wow, it isn’t exactly PC any more, or at all acceptable except as an example of uglier times … this poster is for a Spanish language release, but some U.S. campaigns were identical. I hereby risk the cultural firing squads for a good cause: professional film restoration experts are trying to save the movie.

Previous solicitors know I’m not partial to promoting Kickstarter campaigns, but Bob Furmanek has one that I’d like to see happen, with a thoughtful video pitch for his Save Abbott & Costello’s Africa Screams! Fund. Furmanek and the 3-D Archive have funded the restoration of a couple of 3-D pictures this way; this is their first ‘flat’ picture.

Africa Screams! was a TV staple when I was a kid, and I have a big soft spot for A&C’s Jack and the Beanstalk as well. But prints of the jungle movie always looked terrible; I got into its status a bit more when I talked with one of the Nassour brothers around 1983, on the subject of their other oddball ’50s feature fantasy, The Beast of Hollow Mountain. So give Bob’s pitch a listen — !

Tireless researcher Gary Teetzel sends along this film interview with Hammer Films’ producer James Carreras, courtesy of the ‘Huntley Film Archives,’ whose logo is plastered over everything. Hailing, we think, from around 1965, it’s all chopped up with big silent gaps, but the content is great — this is what the man sounded like. “Remember, Hammer Films are there for when there’s no ‘Bridge on the River Kwai’ around!”

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

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←  Well, the Blu-ray release of Until the End of the World is such a big deal that it gets a double tap today; I hope my overly detailed review raises enough curiosity for some new folks to give the movie a try. By next Saturday we should have a review for the giant Abbott and Costello Collection box set — Charlie Largent is digging through what he reports is a mountain of extras.

→  Trailers from Hell continues to pursue its important public service work… finding hidden filmic treasures. This week they warned us away from movies so bad, they really, really aren’t worth tracking down. Joe Dante’s trailer commentary for Monster a Go Go falls into this category — Dante’s two minute candid assessment will spare you a fate worse than death. So, why does that monster guy with the bumpy face look interesting?

←  Coming up next — my best thoughts on the new Film Movement Blu-ray of the Fritz Lang’s Indian Films: The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb. The colorful transfers show off the fantastic Indian locations, and also the beauty of Debra Paget (swoon), whose ‘sacred dances’ are truly eye-opening.

I’ve received lots of positive reader responses lately for discs as varied as RoboCop, Now, Voyager and The Magic Sword. It’s also nice that my click-bait image at the top of the CineSavant Column gets so many hits as well — the strange Red Planet Mars (→) is one of this week’s ‘most popular articles’ at TFH — where CineSavant consistently scores most of the top positions.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

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I hope you’re having some pre-holiday fun, and not attempting any giant flights or drives for Thanksgiving. ← I have a daughter and her pooch here for the whole week, and am enjoying all of it!

Charlie Largent and I are working on separate reviews for big disc gift sets, both from Shout! Factory, ‘Shout Select’ to be precise. His is the enormous Abbott & Costello: The Complete Universal Pictures Collection, and mine is the same outfit’s The Anne Bancroft Collection, which is interesting because it rounds up features from more than one major studio.

I can see how December will play out: we said we’d drop everything if Criterion’s Until the End of the World or Film Movement’s Fritz Lang’s Indian Epic (→) came through the door — and they just did!  The same enthusiasm will greet Lionsgate’s Cotton Club Encore, Scream Factory’s The Abominable Snowman and plenty of others when they arrive. I also have a backlog of worthy discs from the past month or so that need attention. Have a great holiday and see you on Saturday!

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

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Ha! Gary Teetzel’s researches unearthed this ancient news item (from August 28, 1935) which he referred to as ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Lugosi.’

— the clipping and the photo below can be made larger if opened in a new window —

The news clipping mentions yet another Bela Lugosi project that never came to fruition: playing in a remake (?) of the 1919 classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.  Announcements of movies that never got filmed have of course been a staple since the business got rolling — Famous Monsters and CineFantastique included title- and name- dropping columns in which Peter Lorre or Vincent Price, etc., was ‘announced’ as soon to be playing this or that intriguing title we never heard of.  Most came for naught — I remember Bill Warren put an addendum in his Science Fiction Encyclopedia listing a couple of hundred phantom sci-fi movies, announced but never produced.

The question is, what role was Bela Lugosi going to play?  ‘The star role’ would have to be Dr. Caligari, the sideshow mountebank who may have a double identity as the director of an asylum.  Gary pointed out that Lugosi’s Dr. Mirakle in Murders in the Rue Morgue is a similar character, with some added sex perversion. If Lugosi were to play Dr. Caligari, who would Werner Krauss be?  Krauss was of course Dr. Caligari sixteen years earlier, in Germany; in 1935 he was only 51 years old. Gary doesn’t think Lugosi would want to play Cesare the Somnambulist, as it’s too much like the Frankenstein monster role that he turned down. Did Lugosi think he was going to play the youthful handsome student, the supposed hero?

My guess it that maybe the reporter fumbled the interview — that Lugosi might have said (in his thick accent) that he was going to play the Werner Krauss role, and the note-taker thought he said he’d be playing with Werner Krauss. It doesn’t look as if Krauss was making other movies in England or America at this time (or any other time).

But I very much like to imagine Lugosi having fun and relaxing on a genuine ocean cruise, where he could be ‘the celebrity.’  Do you think any ladies asked to have their picture taken with him, biting their neck?  Probably not — too vulgar for First Class.

CineSavant wastes time department: I see this building a block away in Culver City every couple of weeks when we go to eat there; it’s always looked like an example of bad art direction escaped from Culver Studios or Sony, just a couple of blocks to either side. I keep thinking the tower would do well serving as the top of the Daily Planet for a ’40s Superman show. The ball-in-balance sculpture would also suffice for the headquarters of an arch-villain. The tower could equally say, ‘Evil super-genius lives here.’ Anyway, the sunset light was good enough here for me to give it a shot — it suddenly looked more dramatic.   I take the Bad Art Direction comment back — since I notice it every time, I obviously like it.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson