Hello!

The thing about working a full week (Work!) is that I have to play catch-up on more than one desired title. I’m only just finding out that the Warner Archive’s Blu of the Jonny Quest TV series appears to have already been released as a big box store exclusive, so I’ll have to do some tracking down to get a screener, it appears. Will do my best… that animated series has a LOT of fans.

It’s also a favorite of reviewer/writer/artiste extraordinaire Charlie Largent, so I especially want to find out what he has to say about it. Personally, I think I left Hanna-Barbera behind after a couple of years of Huckleberry Hound… I defected to Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Still looking to score a 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Blu-ray from Disney Club — it wasn’t on the Club’s website for ordering before, but I’m informed that it will pop up today, day and date, for sale.

I like the tagline on this poster art… it breaks the rule of ‘ascendency’ in hype words. “Mighty, Magnificent… Memorable?”   I figured that one out suggesting trailer copy for Superman IV, where the writer had something like, “Threatens the Peace! Threatens the World! Threatens the survival of the Daily Planet!” To explain, I offered a silly example: “Danger! Annihilation! Inconvenience!” The hype needs to ascend, not descend.

Twilight Time’s Michael Finnegan announced their titles for August 20th, only three this time instead of the usual four: Raoul Walsh’s The Tall Men, Otto Preminger’s Whirlpool and Philip Dunne, Clifford Odets & J. R. Salamanca’s (!) Elvis Presley movie, Wild in the Country (pictured). I think I’ve been confusing that Presley title with Follow That Dream for at least fifty years. I guess it isn’t a prequel to this movie, either. I’m still hoping that TT gets around to a Blu-ray upgrade for its first release, the DVD-only disc of John Huston’s The Kremlin Letter. That ultra-cynical movie is getting better with each passing year.

And finally, more new announcements. The Warner Archive’s July Blu-rays, are all winners: The James Cagney / Busby Berkeley pre-Code winner Footlight Parade, the original The Thin Man, Clint Eastwood’s Bronco Billy and Samuel Fuller’s Merrill’s Marauders.

The Criterion Collection will give us Ernst Lubitsch’s Cluny Brown, John Waters’ Polyester, Ritwik Ghatak’s The Cloud-Capped Star, Marco Bellocchio’s Fists in the Pocket, Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus, and, and… Bill Forsyth’s marvelous Local Hero (pictured).

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

The ever-dependable Gary Teetzel forwards yet another scoop from the world of archaic fantasy — A Pulpfest article on a legendary never-shown TV pilot for a Fu Manchu show, starring John Carradine and Cedrick Hardwicke, directed by William Cameron Menzies. The article by William Patrick begins mysteriously enough, stating that the show wasn’t broadcast, that no stills ever surfaced from … it’s the kind of thing that existed only as a rumor. (Yes, this is a picture of Boris Karloff!)

← Gary also saw this photo of a Bangkok theater display for George Pal’s When Worlds Collide on Facebook, so I’m passing it on … sorry, I don’t know who found the photo or originally posted it, but someone in Thailand must have been a BIG sci-fi fan.

If you open it in a new window, you’ll see the photo much bigger .. and you can see a normal large poster for the movie on the left side of the building. That mock-up rocket is many times larger than anything used to make the movie!

What’s happening with reviews? I’m quite a ways through Criterion’s War and Peace and can happily say it’s magnificent — far better than anything I’ve seen. Charlie Largent is hammering (Universaling?) out a full rundown on the Universal Horror Collection Volume 1 (Irene Ware from The Raven pictured). I’ve got The Silent Partner coming up next, and beaucoup discs from KL Studio Classics, Cohen Collection, Olive Films, Criterion, and others. I’ve got some heavy day-job action going at the moment so I’m grateful for the help of CineSavant’s unofficial staff (victims?) … see you Tuesday!

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

They’re ready, but we’re out of time —

Got an early work call today — 2 new reviews coming, possibly this afternoon.

Meanwhile, check out this TFH trailer from yesterday for The Last Judgment, hosted by Joe Dante.

—Glenn

Hello!

The Lincoln Center in New York is hosting a tend-day screening series based on a new book by J. Hoberman Make My Day: Movie Culture in the Age of Reagan. I’ve read Hoberman’s An Army of Phantoms and The Dream Life; they’re a fascinating, detailed combination of movie criticism and history that I’m ready to read again. For him the ’60s began with Sputnik and ended with Watergate, and he marks the 1980s as happening between the Bicentennial and the Iran-Contra Affair

The film series runs between August 23 and September 3 — and the choice of films being examined is excellent. From Conan the Barbarian (John Milius) to Walker (Alex Cox), with stops for Cutter’s Way (Ivan Passer), Gremlins (Joe Dante), Videodrome (David Cronenberg), Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis), True Stories (David Byrne), River’s Edge (Tim Hunter), Robocop (Paul Verhoeven) and They Live (John Carpenter) and about ten more.

We’re hoping to be able to review the new book here at CineSavant.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Welcome to ‘The Blues’ edition of CineSavant reviews. We chose the combination of movies with Blue in the title because… it just worked out that way. Gary Teetzel serves up the links today, gleaned for our perusal, with the questionable interests of CineSavant readers in mind.

First up, Gary says, ‘Blink and you’ll miss him.’

Go down to the forty-three second mark in a British Pathé ‘Sunday Pictorial Garden Party’ newsreel from 1951, for a brief glimpse of a familiar horror star. The newsreel is called Seeing Stars. I guess I’ve been watching a lot of vintage Brit productions on TCM, as I recognize more of these English actors than I thought I would.

Gary moves on to his next find:

“Listening to an old-time radio show while driving to work, I heard a commercial for an upcoming vintage radio documentary called Bomb Target U.S.A., which would look at what might happen if the Russkies tried to bomb the U.S.A. I was hoping for a lot of Cold War sensationalism, but it’s actually fairly dry, mostly trying to scare Americans by matter-of-factly stating that the country isn’t prepared. The ‘Past Daily’ piece is hosted by Arthur Godfrey, who also recorded official announcements to be used in the event of a nuclear attack. Yes, clearly when nuclear Armageddon is imminent, you want to hear the news from the down-home personality guy, the one with the ukelele.”

Real Generals (“Would a real General say that?”) tell about mis-identified aircraft and communication SNAFUs that make our defenses seem serious FAIL-UNSAFE. What kind of Fu Manchu / Dr. Strangelove nuclear mischief is afoot in those evil countries on the other side of the planet?   This sounds like scare stuff to inspire pictures like Hell and High Water.

And finally, as we’re both fans of Circus of Horrors, Gary was scouring old Trade Papers for notices that might enrich us about the film — you know, essential research. Exhibitors were initially told that the Anglo-Amalgamated shocker was in ‘scope, but they weren’t clued in as to how adult-oriented are the scenes with Erika Remberg (top image), Vanda Hudson (just above) and Yvonne Romain… the company clearly wanted to out-do Hammer in the girlie art department.

After the previous year’s Horrors of the Black Museum, you’d think that they’d have at least not booked a lot of kiddie matinees, where some of my friends reported that this gore-fest was better at teaching them about the Birds and the Bees. And I think American-International may have trimmed it a bit. I steal two clippings here, one a basic rave review, and another from Photoplay noting the film’s excellent pop song, ‘Look for a Star,’ that I remember being given a lot of radio play.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Yes, just one review today — time is limited this week because, because, uh, because I’ll have to explain it later. I even had to disappoint some friends going to see the new Godzillah Thrillah. But I should have two reviews up for Saturday, one of them from Charlie Largent.

But there is time to mention a new book, the Scripts from the Crypt #9 tome commemorating Son of Dracula, the Universal horror from 1943 starring Lon Chaney Jr. and directed by Robert Siodmak. As with the other SFTC books, this 300 page item annotates the entire screenplay, various articles and essays, including one by the director and another classifying Son of Dracula as ‘film noird’ (sic). The varied chapters contain a gallery of SOD- and Chaney- related film clippings, and even a breakdown of a proposed alternate sequel to Dracula, written in 1939, which may have been submitted by Bela Lugosi.

This time around Gary D. Rhodes takes top authorial billing, with the book’s major article on the film’s production. The picture may not yield as many sensational sidebar stories of other films in the SFTC series – no murders, no cast members with tragic or sordid futures — but the compensation is Son’s high quality reputation in the Universal tradition of horror. Robert Siodmak didn’t slack off because of the subject matter, but contributed stylistic graces that the industry noted, and that gave him a neat springboard to bigger films, starting with his very next thriller Phantom Lady, a full-on classic. That’s the way careers are supposed to work. Interviewer par excellence Tom Weaver scours his research files to come up with a veritable pleth… fplethor… a whole bunch of interesting and odd scrapbook trade paper announcements, newspaper and pub clippings, plus more arcane errata relating to the film and its personnel. Tom also does a bit of analysis of annotations found in the script.

Dr. Robert J. Kiss follows with his illuminating breakdown of the film’s release pattern, noting that the show played both as a stand-alone item and often in tandem with the downbeat The Mad Ghoul. Gregory William Mank checks in with an article on actress Louise Albritton, whose character can arguably be described as more central than Chaney’s Dracula — her scheme to double-cross the undead king after achieving immortality makes her horror dame cross the line into noir femme fatale territory.

And hold on to your big top!  CineSavant newshound Gary Teetzel slips in a last-minute report that Scream Factory has announced yet another wholly desirable horror item for Blu-ray, 1960’s marvelous Circus of Horrors. For me this is ‘exploitative’ horror perfection, a picture that’s forthright about its sadistic thrills, which are neatly mixed up with eye-candy voyeurism and luridly colored mutilation. With so many perverse and purely evil motivations afoot, the entire enterprise is somehow ‘pruriently wholesome,’ if such a thing can be.

It stars Anton Diffring, Erika Remberg, Yvonne Monlaur, Yvonne Romain, Donald Pleasance — a veritable smorgasbord of horror fiends and dames. And if that’s not enough, it’s one of the better circus movies, too. No release date has been set but we’ll be looking out for desirable extras.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson