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I’m getting things straightened out for the holidays, and just starting to catch up some of the Oscar-bait pictures that are all hitting at once. I’m sure that the special contender The Irishman will make an impact, but I’m waiting until I can share it with family members. The same goes for other Netflix- accessible offerings like Marriage Story, and I want to see Laundromat even though nobody’s touting it. I did see 1917, Bombshell  and Knives Out over the weekend, but didn’t get to Parasite, another title that I am pre-warned will become a favorite.

Knives Out is clever and cute and fun, and kind of forgettable. It’s a perfectly good movie of a kind not made much anymore, the light comedy murder thriller with familiar faces. Daniel Craig doing an accent is entertaining in itself. Bombshell is excellent, both as a story about sexual harassment culture and Fox News as an unofficial branch of the U.S. government. The star actresses are really good, and John Lithgow’s fat suit had me worried that he’s really gained all that weight.

1917  did nothing for me, I’m afraid. There was nothing new in the experience it offered, and plenty of the old clichés. Our behind-the-lines troopers are almost hit by a crashing airplane, one of them shares ‘sensitive’ quality time with a lonely French woman, etc.. I don’t understand why critics are impressed by the ‘it’s one unbroken shot’ aspect — respect for a technical feat like that can only go so far, and the trick doesn’t make the film seem any more real or immediate, not to me anyway. What the camera does is more interesting than the story in front of it. I’m also thinking, what… was communication at the front that poor? They didn’t use planes to send important messages? (maybe they didn’t). Don’t mean to be a crab about this — maybe some friend will talk me into an appreciation of whatever it is about 1917 that I’m missing.

I guess I’m mostly reporting on what I haven’t seen — Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is so far still this year’s big positive movie memory for me. I’ll write about the other titles soon enough. Any screaming important recommendations?

I think I’ve given up on a standard ‘best of’ movie article this year. Not only has the notion of ‘best of’ lists become even less attractive, my own have simply been personal favorite lists for six years anyway, and not that meaningful to anybody but me and whatever company or disc producer gets the top slot. This year there were just too many personal favorites offered. No matter what artificial yardstick I applied to my choices, it was impossible to come up with a short list of ‘favorites.’

This is because 2019 saw an explosion of ‘Glenn Movies,’ pictures my friends could easily predict I’d go nuts over. You’d think someone tapped my brain — just in this one year there were at least ten gotta-mention favorite Sci-fi titles. How can I start arranging those in some kind of arbitrary order of best-ness?

I’m therefore just going to put forward a very long list of things I reviewed that I can STRONGLY recommend, in case somebody who cares missed something. I’ll say WHY a film is included, which will expose my faulty lapses in taste and judgment for all to see. And that’s always entertaining.

Speaking of Blu-ray releases seemingly zeroing in on movies special to this movie fan, I just got an announcement of Kino Lorber Studio Classics releases for January alone. It’s a treasure trove. In no order of preference, they’re giving us spaghetti westerns: Kill them All and Come Back Alone, The Specialists, The Hellbenders; and Brit Crime pix: The Interrupted Journey, Cosh Boy, Time is My Enemy, Time Lock, The Vicious Circle.

Also, pix by great directors: The Great McGinty (Preston Sturges), Room at the Top (Jack Clayton), The Good Fairy (William Wyler/Preston Sturges), House by the River (Fritz Lang), Ulzana’s Raid (Robert Aldrich), The War Lord (Franklin J. Schaffner), The Whisperers (Bryan Forbes); odd fantasies: Doctor Cyclops, Cobra Woman; a war movie: Tobruk; and a popular comedy: Semi-Tough.

And Criterion has announced its March releases: Spike Lee’s Bamboozled, Barbra Streisand’s The Prince of Tides, John M. Stahl’s Leave Her to Heaven (I hope the audio is clearer this time), the Maysles Brothers’ Salesman, and best of all, Mikhail Kalatozov’s The Cranes are Flying and James Whale’s 1936 Showboat!

Will the disc boutiques eventually run out of movies I care about?  Or is it like the French Resistance — you knock off one movie, and two rise to take its place?  Maybe it’s all a plot to make me retire.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

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A trio of fun, or kinda fun, or, not entirely depressing special links today!

↑ First up, U.K. correspondent Dave Carnegie sends along this rather good encoding of a 1955 MGM cartoon, in CinemaScope no less, entitled Good Will to Men. I’m sure I’ve talked about it before; it’s a second go at a much earlier cartoon with the theme that war will make humans extinct, with only cute talking animals left behind to inherit the Earth. The old, isolationist-themed cartoon (Peace on Earth, 1939) ended with conventional warfare doing the trick; this 1955 remake does the job right, with a fully-animated Atomic Cafe– like nuclear exchange. Faux-pacifist stuff like this just feels defeatist, as our reaction is that the planet is lost anyway, so who cares?   I just feel like commiserating with Dave over there in G.B., in the middle of Brexit.

← Our other slightly more research-minded links arrive via advisor/unofficial column editor Gary Teetzel (who else?). Gary comes across with the vintage magazine finds that illuminate favorite ancient pictures. The first item up is from the December 14, 1931 issue of The Film Daily: Carl Laemmle takes out a full-page institutional advert to congratulate his salesmen (and himself) for the socko-boffo, pretty darn terrific performance of a certain horror classic starring a reanimated corpse. It’s called I Thank the Publicity and Advertising Men of the Theaters — open it in a new window to see it full-sized. The same works for the other two graphics below.

I like some of the phrasing here — I didn’t know that the term ‘cut loose,’ with the meaning ‘go for it without restraint,’ went as far back as far as 1931.

→ Then Gary sends us to a fancy magazine layout that makes us think that the term pre-Code applies to fan mags as well. Don’t worry, the title is a come-on, and the article is SFW. It’s a silly Photoplay piece with star Maureen O’Sullivan, or an imaginative studio publicty hack pretending to be Ms. O’Sullivan, talking about the star’s wardrobe, or lack thereof, in MGM’s Tarzan and His Mate. The come-on title is The Miseries of Nudism.

↓ Gary’s links seem to come in threes, like wise men, or parking tickets. He next advises us to check out a February 27, 1933 Hollywood Reporter story titled Writers’ War on Filth. It mentions the upcoming William Faulkner film adaption then- titled The Shame of Temple Drake. Now here’s a come-on line nobody could resist: “The story is so dirty, George Raft refused to play the lead!”  And more great copy: “If you want to get a job today in pictures at good money, all you have to do is write a dirty book.”  In the immortal words of Scott Glenn, ‘Sounds dangerous, count me in.’

The ‘perversion’ the article harps about is homosexuality, of which The Story of Temple Drake has none, if I recall. The piece waxes incensed about a Lesbian dance in Sign of the Cross, and a movie called Sailor’s Luck, with ‘pansies all through it.’ A ‘nance’ cook is mentioned in Hell’s Highway. Not that I’d know the real thing when I saw it, but the most eye-opening pre-Code swishy gay stuff I recall seeing is in the trashy Clara Bow talkie Call Her Savage. It records part of what looks like a real ‘pansy’ act, by two prancing, mincing waiters in a Greenwich Village club frequented by ‘artists and radicals.’

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

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First, some photos of total arbitrary import, which is what we serve up best here at CineSavant. Digging around in some boxes of old Cinefantastiques and Video Watchdogs, I came up with this beauty with a Yuletide theme courtesy of Don Martin, from 1962. I thought it might lend a proper ersatz holiday flavor to the Column. Note the yellowed paper and even a coffee stain. No protective plastic envelopes for this irresponsible non-collector.

I was reading this particular issue when I was nine years old … how much of it did I fully understand?  Should I thank Mad magazine for honing my radar for commercial flim-flammery and ironic hypocrisy?  Or did it just make me a cynical little kid who only thought he was a non-conformist?

Then, for no good reason I snapped this picture of the corner of Melrose and Gower, a couple of blocks from my house — it’s the RKO globe, minus its tower but still standing proudly on what is now the corner of the Paramount Lot. I think Paramount, instead of tearing it down (they threaten to do so periodically) should restore the tower for nostalgia’s sake. BTW, when you’re looking at your new Blu-rays of Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the poster-boards seen in this photo are utilized to stand-in for the exterior of Columbia Pictures, which in 1969 was further up Gower Street, at Sunset.

I should be taking more pictures of the Ennis House — The House on Haunted Hill. I see it twice a week from my grocery store parking lot. When the weather gets free of its typical gray haze, the house often looks really dramatic. I’ll need to get a longer lens, though.

Spotted on Amazon by various clever individuals, including Gary Teetzel — an un-announced stealth pre-order for a Scream Factory Blu-ray of Roger Corman’s Day the World Ended, for March 10. I like that!   A good widescreen encoding of this fun film would be a real treat — I think we it’s the first movie in which Roger really gets his act together, in terms of full commercial credibility. Opening the package art image in a new window will give a full appreciation of American Relasing’s crude but catchy original poster artwork.

I found out who the audio commentator will be a month or two ago, but under threat of death I cannot divulge the name. Thus CineSavant remains forever scoop-challenged. Is that integrity, or what?  

UPDATE, 12.11.19:  Shout calls foul on the March 10 date:

“The Blu-ray isn’t coming in March. It will be coming though. Amazon jumped the gun.”

Let’s talk about scary movies.  I wind up today’s column with a good steer back into Trailers from Hell territory … Joe Dante’s commentary-enhanced trailer for Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter is a keeper. The trailer itself is pretty good, but Joe’s in especially fine form, describing his 1955 afternoon matinee packed with little kids scared out of their wits. As a movie director, Joe made me a bit nervous now and then the first time through Gremlins. I smile when I remind myself of how he made me jump with two or three terrific honest scares in The Howling.

It’s fun to hear Mr. Dante reminisce about his Night of the Hunter experience, even if only for a minute. That’s a good topic for a research paper: What Scares Joe Dante?

Do we really expect to be frightened at horror movies?  Grossed-out is not the same as frightened, which puts gore pictures and torture porn beyond my scope of interest. I can’t remember when I saw Curse of the Demon the first time. I still get a horror-thrill ‘kick’ from the movie, but I can’t say I was ever scared, even when it startled others in the audience.

We all got scared at some movie or another when we were kids, even if we weren’t taken by surprise like he was at the Robert Mitchum movie. I had experiences like Joe too, white-knuckling all of Caltiki – The Immortal Monster and being pretty much paralyzed with fear all the way through The Birds. And for some reason I was scared of being buried alive while watching an obscure movie called Terrified, that I’ve never seen again. But those were EXCITING, FUN sensations for a fairly sheltered kid… Night of the Hunter was jolting as an adult — it think it would have traumatized me as a kid, even as a teenager.

And I’m still puzzled by a few pictures that, seen as an adult, made me FEEL like a scared kid again: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus and even Jaws. It’s all very personal, I guess — these were all seen in a theater under optimum conditions, in my twenties.
I hope somebody brings out The Seventh Victim in a remastered Blu — that’ll be a fun experience to write about, too.

Today’s kids have seen stuff far, far stronger than anything I was exposed to — and we see live-action actual killings on TV news every day. But they still have to be scared once in a while. Anybody have any stories to tell about being TERRORIZED at the Bijou?  We’ve all been little kids, cringing behind the sofa while the older sister watched something fairly harmless on TV. But what big screen experiences made you too scared to see the same movie again, ever?

Cheery Christmas post, huh?  Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

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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