Hello!

My thanks to Toby Roan, who after reading an older article about a Special Effect Shot in Kronos, tracked down the magazine I remembered reading, and sent me a copy!   FantaScene Vol. 1 No. 2 was from Summer 1976, and was indeed put together by Robert and Dennis Skotak, using their interview material with Hollywood effects folk like Jack Rabin, Irving Block, etc.

The FantaScene cover art made me realize that my eye is critical of some visuals and not others. In Forbidden Planet’s Id Monster attack scene, the invisible creature is ‘painted’ by the disintegrator blast of the Space Force’s ray guns. But I just realized now, that what literally happens is that the red-fire flux illuminates a line drawing of the Id Monster. For a few seconds, he becomes The King of Cartoons, atomic edition. A remake of this scene would seem a perfect subject for CGI work, with the sizzling energy flowing over parts of the monster. Perhaps sections would be disintegrated, only to be instantly regenerated by the Krell energy projector.

I hope that Robert Skotak does follow through on his promises to publish more of his research … I enjoyed his book on Ib Melchior, and he’s accumulated a huge volume of original research on Eastern Bloc sci-fi pictures. His commentary on last year’s Blu-ray of This Island Earth, good as it was, only scratched the surface of his discoveries.

Gary Teetzel sent this link along a week or so ago, and I’ve just now found the time to check it out. Rescuing Scenic Backdrops from Hollywood’s Golden Age gives us a good look at those giant movie artworks that used to be everywhere in pictures — a while back, I even noted a severely wrinkled city backdrop in Roger Corman’s The Wasp Woman. Most seem to be from MGM, which maintained a dedicated building for the painting of huge CinemaScope backdrop canvases. That art shop had an elevator to raise and lower the canvas into a slot in the floor, so the artist didn’t have to work on a scaffold.

It’s pretty cool to see the landscape of Altair-4 unfurl. ( ↑ ) I’m pretty sure the giant cycloramic backdrop we see is just one of two or maybe three, that wrapped around the soundstage in a big circle, partly surrounding the spaceship.

The common mistake I’ve noticed with backdrops seen through doors and windows, is giving them a perfect exposure, that often says, ‘artificial studio work.’ When we take photos indoors, windows almost always burn out, at least a little. Overexposing what’s outside the window a little bit always makes the scene look more real.

Some of the scenic paintings in the news piece (like one I think from the June Allyson Little Women) are in static, locked-off shots, with the effect that they resemble matte paintings, much smaller artworks combined in the camera. I had always thought that the view of the Yellow Brick Road on the way out of Munchkinland was a matte painting, not a large backdrop, because the shot doesn’t move. Maybe these people know better, and it indeed was an artwork backdrop.

On the other hand, there’s the news piece’s questionable example of Richard Beymer against the stylized New York background from the original West Side Story. I’m fairly certain that what we see is not a scenic background, but a smaller matte painting, rear-projected behind the singing actor walking on a treadmill. I know that the background artwork of the city buildings was painted on a piece of masonite about eight feet wide, because the original hung over a sofa in Linwood Dunn’s reception room at his Film Effects of Hollywood building. Hoyt Yeatman and I visited that office in 1975, and immediately recognized it.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

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I missed Valentine’s Day, but compensations abound. Here’s Guy Maddin’s rapturous, stylized Valentine to the undying spirit of movies: KINO!   The giddy confabulation of agit-prop and Gance delirium lasts only six chaotic minutes and is given the apt title The Heart of the World. Hooray for Anna — Go Girl!

Kino Lorber has sent out a list of its Blu-ray releases for May, which has a number of immediately recognizable titles. The ones that grabbed my interest immediately are

A Thousand Clowns with Jason Robards and Barbara Harris (1965), Me, Natalie with Patty Duke (1969), Brighton Rock with Richard Attenborough and Carol Marsh ( ↑ 1948), An Inspector Calls with Alistair Sim (1954), The Captive Heart with Michael Redgrave (1946), Lonely Are the Brave with Kirk Douglas (1962), A Man, a Woman and a Bank with Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams (1979), Old Boyfriends with Talia Shire (1979), and finally, a Blu-ray 3-D disc of Taza, Son of Cochise with Rock Hudson and Barbara Rush (1954).

Last Month we saw a ‘Smilebox’ trailer reconstruction for the second Cinerama feature How The West Was Won; and now we’re being offered the same screen-shape treatment applied to the first, George Pal’s The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm. It looks like the Grimm trailer was in good-enough shape not to need reconstruction.

And finally, correspondent and advisor Gary Teetzel forwards this ‘Usaopoly’ article about a real product, a new board game version of Godzilla Monopoly.

As usual, Gary’s inquiries cut right to the heart of today’s most important issues:   “Instead of putting up houses and hotels in Godzilla Monopoly, will we put up burned apartments and crushed hotels? Will Monster Island replace Boardwalk as the most valuable property? Instead of going to jail, will we be sent into hybernation within a volcano?”   In addition to ‘Monopoly: Godzilla’ they make mention of a ‘Jenga: Godzilla Extreme Edition’ game.  So many questions…

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

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Let’s see here, what’s cookin’ on the Blu-ray Threat Board… I planned to have a Parasite review up today but I need more time on it, so it’s coming for next Saturday. The South Korean black comedy is certainly worth all the praise and awards it has earned — trusted associates all said, it’s brilliant, check it out.

The same day will probably bring Charlie Largent’s take on a new Preston Sturges disc.

And I think I’ll get a look at an early copy of X The Unknown, everybody’s favorite movie about an ambulatory black slime from the center of the Earth ( ↑ ). I ought to drag out my original 1-sheet poster for that one!  Boy, the rush of vintage fantastic Blu-ray releases has been terrific. If just a few holdouts were to arrive, we’d have almost all of classic British science fiction available on Region A Blu-ray.

I also reconnected with a slight but entertaining thriller that I saw once back in 1971 before it disappeared, Perfect Friday. It’s another Stanley Baker movie, a heist thriller with David Warner in a typically bizarre characterization. Baker himself looks as if he’s become morphed with John Cleese, only he doesn’t do a ‘funny walk.’ Sexy Ursula Andress finally does what all of her male fans wished she would do, ever since a Caribbean beach and Dr.No. I think she uses her real voice in this one … and she carries her leading role very well.

Plus, long-time (twenty years!) stealth correspondent “B” is feverishly writing up a review-essay for the Warner Archives’ new Tex Avery Screwball Classics Volume 1, the one with 19 cartoons, due February 19. I saw it last week — happily, the transfers and audio are what we’ve been hoping for.

UK correspondent Lee Broughton has a review coming for a movie he describes as a British horror film set in Tehran called Under the Shadow. I guess I’ll find out what that is when I read it.

A nice night at the Oscars this year, even though I only sampled the show, and skipped the ‘in memoriam’ section, which hasn’t been good in years. Some charming, moving acceptance speeches, a reasonably sane pageant all around. Parasite wasn’t my favorite but it may have been the most challenging, sophisticated contender, which flatters the Academy’s taste. PC ethnic and gender politics seem mostly to spin the reporting and editorializing of the Oscars, but this year I’d say voters went for shows they thought were good, not just the ones with progressive politics.

It’s nothing to wail about that my fave Tarantino pic didn’t get the nod — Mr. Q can live without yet another feather in his cap. It’s perhaps an un-gallant negative observation, but I guess I’m most pleased that the grossly overrated 1917 didn’t take Best Picture. It really did nothing for me, and I was a bit dismayed When I read so many accolades and predictions that it had the perfect combination of elements to appeal to the audience.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Powerhouse Indicator has announced an interesting Blu-ray box: John Ford at Columbia 1935 – 1958 will arrive on April 20. The set contains the hilarious The Whole Town’s Talking with Jean Arthur and Edward G. Robinson (already reviewed in a Twilight Time Blu-ray), the curious West Point biography The Long Gray Line, Ford’s first film in CinemaScope; the odd police story Gideon’s Day aka Gideon of Scotland Yard, and his Spencer Tracy picture The Last Hurrah, also released here already by Twilight Time. I’m most curious to see the West Point movie, which was always in need of an improved transfer. I’m not much of a fan of the last two, an opinion that sometimes makes me unpopular with the Ford faithful.

Also coming on April 20 from PI is Jack Garfein’s military school hazing drama The Strange One, a very good movie that always made me uncomfortable — I could tell there was something sexually off-level in the power games being played by Ben Gazzara’s amoral cadet. The mental domination and veiled sadism in The Strange One is pretty rough for the late 1950s. Between this picture and the next year’s Anatomy of a Murder, Gazzara launched his career with a pair of really dark (sick?) characters. It’s also an early appearance, if not the first film, by George Peppard.

Director Garfein passed away fairly recently; his other movie, an emotional ordeal with Carroll Baker called Something Wild (1961) is highly recommended as well. ( → )

I’m still receiving requests to review the new German Blu-ray of the Steve Reeves’ version of The Thief of Bagdad (Der Gauner von Bagdad), but all I’ve been able to see is a couple minutes’ worth of a friend’s copy, in pasing. The picture looked good, but seemed to be a bit squeezed horizontally; I’d have to play the disc on more than one machine to confirm that. It appeared to be a full-length version in English created by reverting to Italian for scenes cut for the U.S. (That trick of course fascinates me, as it shows exactly how a clever editor shortened the movie, sometimes taking out only a dialogue line here and there.)

But a correspondent ‘Chuck’ sent me a link to pretty good review at a site called PeplumTV. The reviewer seems to approve of the disc, and he doesn’t note any image distortion. The part of Der Gauner von Bagdad that I saw was pretty nice — the happy Arabian princess character looks like a fresh-faced California Girl. Childhood favorite Steve Reeves is charming, despite having only one ‘ain’t I a sneaky fellow?’ smirk on his face most of the time.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson