Hello!

The relentlessly alert Gary Teetzel has found another item of audio interest, this time for fans of Japanese film composer Akira Ifukube: In fewer than three seconds you’ll surely recognize the very familiar melody line of this title tune from a 1946 Shochiku picture, posted nine years ago by ‘nanamatsu100.’ A nine-year offset is pretty efficient for a CineSavant item — it’s likely that this title sequence is common knowledge among confirmed Kaiju folk.

Anyway, the YouTube link is to the original title theme from that timeless favorite ‘Shacho to Onna-Tennin,’ aka “The President and Shopgirl.” Is the music we’re hearing appropriate for an office romance?  In Harvey Weinstein’s office, maybe.

Next up, a link to a page that ought to provide good reading for fans of science fiction movies. Finnish journalist Janne Wass gives us ‘Scifist 2.0: A Sci-fi Movie History in Reviews. Herra Janne Wass’s reviews are even more detailed and sidebar-oriented than my own. I like his general outlook and sensitivity to the highlights and limitations of films that seem to interest only devotees like myself. Wass is particularly well wired to the histories and context of early European and particularly Soviet Sci-fi, and backs up his thoughtful reviews with biographical data and expressive images. He has full coverage of films I’ve never heard of, like the German Der Herr vom andern Stern (1948) which predates The Day the Earth Stood Still with a similar premise.

I often have my nose in my writing so deep that I don’t keep up with everything good that’s being done around me — but I learned something with each Wass review. In the territorial, egotistical, self-promoting world of Internet film genre journalism, how often do you read praise of the other guy’s efforts, especially when the other guy is writing nearly the exact same kind of criticism?  More power to Mr. Wass.

And it appears that the independently curated, restored and marketed Blu-ray The Puppetoon Movie Volume 2 is finally up for pre-order. Eighteen restored Hi Def Puppetoons adorn Volume 2, and their quality can be seen through a new trailer.

The popularity of George Pal’s Puppetoons has never faded — I was able to attend a tumultuous reception for Mr. Pal at one of the Filmex festivals held in Century City. A day later I discovered him alone in an exhibit of miniatures from his films, and found it very easy to talk to the gentleman. “Nice” was the operative word for the man — it’s hard to believe that he did so well in Hollywood, he was so gentle.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Many thanks to Trailers from Hell’s Charlie Largent for fabricating this new banner and its slogan. Our previous Covid banner anticipated the Second Wave, and it or something worse might still be on the way … but I wanted to Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the positive as much as possible, without being too flippant… or grim. This banner is ‘busier’ than the other so I’ll probably shrink it down in size after a couple of weeks. Thanks Charlie!

I know I’m spoiled but where is my favorite movie? department.
The announcement last Tuesday that the disc boutique The Film Detective is working on a Giant from the Unknown disc opened a filmic can of worms — more discussion of hotly desired classic-era fantasy features unnecessarily out of circulation. That gave correspondent Matt Martell the impetus to send along a snapshot illustrating the state of affairs for collectors of ‘fifties American-International pix. Matt:

“It’s the main reason I still have a high-end VCR in my entertainment center.”

I fully understand. I no longer have a VHS player but I still have my pre-record of It Conquered the World from the same ‘Drive In Classic’ set as Teenage Werewolf and Teenage Frankenstein.

Next up,
Gary Teetzel found this trade ad for Hammer’s 1959 The Mummy. Compared to the average ‘our movie is raking in the cash so book it now’ ad come-on for exhibitors, this one is actually pretty clever. I guess it also appeals to me because I saw it new and was thrilled beyond words. It was a couple of years before I learned that the earlier classic Hammers even existed, thanks to Famous Monsters of Filmland.

It appears that after the initial run of Horror of Dracula, Universal sold its distribution rights to Warners, so Warners could double-bill it with The Curse of Frankenstein. Warners also paid a pretty penny for The Mummy, which was originally a Universal-International release as well. Those sales say something about the popularity of the Hammer brand, but it is also true that Universal-International was financially on the ropes right about that time. Yet it held onto its upcoming The Brides of Dracula, which must have been a separate deal that included eight future Hammer productions. Universal-International didn’t completely become just plain ‘Universal’ again until early in 1963. (Actually, this is a simplified version of events — the ‘Seven Arts’ company works in the middle of this timeline, too…)

Continuing
— with a second dose of old Boxoffice reviews, I remember clearly why I pulled each of these particular five notices. They’re trade reviews, which are supposed to tell exhibitors whether or not an individual film will attract audiences, not necessarily whether it’s any good or not. As with all the graphics in this Column, the blurbs are more easily read when opened in a new window.

Any questions as to why Val Lewton’s The Seventh Victim made little or no impact in 1943 are answered in this notice, which can’t make head or tails of Val’s ode to moody depression and despair. True, narrative clarity isn’t the movie’s strongest suit but time has turned it into an unique classic. I like the way the reviewer can’t get past the very quality that makes the picture so good. I care what happens, even if if Hugh Beaumont can’t seem to get worked up about anything.

The coverage on Sam Katzman’s anti-matter superbird epic The Giant Claw reads as if it were written yesterday, as it’s exactly what every fan review and scholarly takedown has said about the movie from day one … all that’s missing is the ‘Are we sure this isn’t supposed to be a joke?’ query. The reviewer knows his stock shots and is hep to the big-bird jive: ‘bigger-than-a-battleship!’

For a long time it seemed impossible to gauge reactions to Robert Aldrich / A.I. Bezzerides’ Kiss Me Deadly. Many ‘nice’ reviewers and publications skipped it and the Kefauver Commission singled it out as unhealthy and un-patriotic. This is a fair assessment, I’d say, of the general reaction to the new level of violence — I think the writer wants to call it obscene and leave it at that. But he goes into so much detail it’s obvious that he’s fascinated. Last thought: those bland taglines on the bottom can’t be serious.

Here’s another moody, wispy horror-mystery show that trade reviewers can be forgiven for not writing critical raves. Frank Wisbar remade and re-thought his earlier German film into a PRC special, a movie so fog-shrouded that the ‘swamp’ is represented on a dry-for wet set, all covered by movie smoke. The boats must be on wheels. Strangler of the Swamp would be a favorite, we think, if we could just see a good copy. It stars Ming the Merciless, and Blake Edwards when he was an actor.

And we always like reviews that reinforce our own unpopular opinions. This blurb thinks Universal’s cut-price The Leech Woman is just fine, which is okay by me. Note how the reviewer is fully aware of the ‘femme relatives’ in the movie’s double bill co-feature. He must have liked the movie, as he refers to its many minutes of safari stock footage as a plus factor. If I had a new horror movie on the way, I’d look up this writer and take him to lunch.

I’ve got one more pack of these reviews to come … thanks for the positive notes about them.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello…. interesting times we’re having, aren’t they?

The CineSavant column soldiers on…  First up, Dick Dinman has a new podcast show ready, about the recent Criterion release The Lady Eve. His guest is Preston Sturges’ son Tom, who once wrote me to say that he too thought the ‘mystery legs’ hanging from a tree in Sullivan’s Travels were plenty funny. Dick’s interview piece is at his DVD Classics Corner on the Air page.

Then we have a pair of kickstarter campaigns, to fund worthy, interesting restorations.

David Kawas over at ClassicFlix has started an Indegogo campaign to preserve and restore the Little Rascals library of short subjects. It’s badly needed — I need to do some snooping to figure out how to distinguish The Little Rascals from Our Gang. Kalas’ first proposed disc is called The Complete Little Rascals – The ClassicFlix Restorations, Volume 1 and would include the first 22 sound short, from Small Talk to Dogs Is Dogs. The Indegogo page is informative in itself.

Next, Bob Furmanek and the 3-D Film Archive announce a big Kickstarter Campaign to rejuvenate a childhood favorite that really needs it, the Abbott & Costello Jack and the Beanstalk. It was independently produced and originally released by Warner Bros.

I have to admit I always loved this thing as a kid, and that Costello missed a bet by not making more movies aimed at tots, especially because he kept using his ‘infantile’ schtick. I even love the music, dancing and other aspects of the sweet-hearted little production. The ‘prince’ character has EXACTLY the sickly smile and hairdo I remember from kiddie storybooks. The movie was originally in color… make that Super Cine Color. Bob Furmanek says they’ll be able to perform a restoration as perfect as their previous A&C accomplishment Africa Screams.

And finally, check your thermometers because Hell may be freezing over… the film collector and disc entrepreneur Wade Williams has licensed a title for Blu-ray. He’s starting modestly, with a promising disc of Richard Cunha’s 1958 ressurrected-Conquistador-on-a-rampage saga Giant from the Unknown. The new transfer is said to be taken from the original negative. The extras would seem to have been corralled by Tom Weaver, who contributes both a commentary and a booklet essay.

The disc company of note is The Film Detective, a fine outfit that does very good work. We want the disc to do well, and thus encourage Mr. Williams to let the spice discs flow. We’ve heard chatter about The Film Detective releasing the Williams-held Ed Wood masterpieces; perhaps next up we’ll also get fun discs of Frankenstein’s Daughter and Missile to the Moon.

Wait a minute, what is this, appreciate Buddy Baer week?  He’s the title star in both Jack and the Beanstalk and Giant from the Unknown.

I think I’ll save the next batch of vintage capsule reviews for Saturday. Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Roving researcher Gary Teetzel saw that ‘HBO Max’ is showing the Hammer- Terence Fisher The Curse of Frankenstein, took a look, and found that the eyeball close-up, missing on the Warner DVD, is has been restored. ( ↓ ) We do note that a ‘newly remastered’ movie that was on HBO Max last month (Sunrise at Campobello) is suddenly on the WAC release schedule. Does that maybe mean that… ?   I haven’t heard about work being done on the Cushing/Lee classic, but it’s well known that we at CineSavant are quick to leapfrog to conclusions, especially optimistic ones. I’m not pretending I don’t know something either: if I had secret info I wouldn’t risk the connection by speculating like this.

I can think of five unpleasant things this bit of viscera might really be, but I’d never guess a human eyeball.

Yes, we admit it, it’s a slow news day … so I dug up some old Boxoffice reviews that I collected a number of years ago — I’ll spread them out over two or three columns. Nothing can be more head-scratching than seeing an original ‘capsule’ review for American exhibitors. As always we like unusual movies the most, but reviewers have trouble handing ‘different’ when communicating to theater owners. Then again, if they don’t like something, they make their opinions known loud and clear.

Two notes: You may need to open these in new windows to read them. I’m pretty sure that the letters ‘A’ and ‘F’ designate American or Foreign in origin.

Let me start with the movie just discussed, The Curse of Frankenstein. The reviewer fixates on all the severed body parts, as if he can’t believe that movies have sunk so low. But even he communicates the buzz that this would be an audience pleaser.

Much earlier, this reviewer seems to have thought Val Lewton’s Cat People was sick psychology and little else. Yet he seems to admit that it works.

But some smart cookie responded well to Edgar G.’s Detour. Was this reviewer extra-hip to the movie’s fatalistic on-the-road vibe, or did somebody at P.R.C. just pay him off?

Here’s something they clobbered, and took a couple of extra paragraphs to do the job right: The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues. “Hodgepodge, perfunctory, inconsequential” — I don’t think those are compliments.

And finally for this first batch, a surprising review that goes against the grain. Daily Variety dismissed Enemy From Space aka Quatermass 2 as an incoherent waste of energy. But Boxoffice clearly digs it, big-time: “One of the best.” And they mention Bryan Forbes, ‘a likable youngster!’

I clipped out enough of these things to keep it up for a bit, so let me know if seeing more is a good idea ..Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

We enjoyed Eddie Muller’s Noir Alley presentation this weekend, as we always do — even if I don’t watch the movie I tune in to Eddie’s opening and closing pieces as if I were attending Remedial Noir 101. Eddie’s facts and thoughts on Irving Pichel’s 1947 noir winner They Won’t Believe Me were no disappointment, and even in the isolation of the pandemic, his interview with Joan Harrison biographer Christina Lane was successful. Of all of TCM’s hosts promoted as celebrities, Eddie Muller most merits the honor.

They Won’t Believe Me is a very good RKO thriller starring Robert Young, Susan Hayward, Jane (swoon) Greer and Rita Johnson. TCM’s transfer was ancient, and bore an ‘RKO Video’ logo that I associate with a group of VHS tapes released in the 1980s. The first thing I did was to measure the running time, because of a discussion I had a couple of years ago with The Warner Archive Collection’s esteemed George Feltenstein. The subject was RKO films that had been hacked down for reissue in the 1950s, and that had proved difficult for Turner/WB to restore to their original running times. WB did a pretty good job on The Thing from Another World, which came out on Blu-ray in December of 2018. Just this year the Archive surprised us with a beautiful full restoration of the Robert Mitchum/Loretta Young/William Holden pioneer story Rachel and the Stranger, which is now a full 11 minutes longer than anything seen since the middle 1950s.

I was bugging George with my usual question about a favorite — can Howard Hawks’ full length epic The Big Sky be restored?  It was trimmed for reissue by either 15 or 20 minutes, depending on which source one reads. TCM plays it in a compromised presentation that extends the two-hour reissue cut with lesser-quality scenes from a 16mm print. As are many library titles waiting in line for possible restoration, The Big Sky is ‘in the works.’ I have no idea whether Turner/WB has it sitting on a back burner, or if no better source has been located, or if a restoration is just not in the cards at the present time. That’s all proprietary information. (Come on, folks, do it to honor Kirk Douglas…)

But George enlightened me about another needed restoration, of which I was not at all aware — They Won’t Believe Me. The RKO noir seems to be in the same boat as the Howard Hawks western. What Eddie Muller showed Saturday night was +/- 80 minutes in duration, and the original 1947 release is listed as a full fifteen minutes longer. I forget what George said exactly — I’m not certain if restoring They Won’t Believe Me is held up because the necessary film just isn’t there, or because the restoration program simply hasn’t gotten to it yet.

A full fifteen minutes missing!  RKO’s editors must have made some very careful revisions, because no obvious cuts are visible. But every time I see the movie I get the feeling that I missed something, and ought to pay more attention next time. They Won’t Believe Me is one of those pictures ‘with issues’ that I try to DVR every time it shows up on TCM — just in case some miraculous restoration appears. That’s happened more than once.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson