Hello!   LATE NEWS FLASH — SAVANT DEAD IN PLANE!

It’s not true, I’m happy to say. Watching the new Blu of  I Died a Thousand Times, we were at first a little dismayed to discover a news item announcing my dee-mise. That’ll come soon enough, but please not back in 1955 when I was still a tot.

This ‘Savant Dead in Plane’ blurb has the added worry factor of Jack Palance staring at me. He looks angry, as if demanding to know why I’m not dead like I’m supposed to be.

The  Classic Horror Film Board used to have some great postings, where contributors would send in ‘newspaper shots’ from movies. In Sci-fi and fantasy films, the insert shots would announce amazing discoveries or dire threats, and nobody would look closely at the minor columns. With good quality home video, pausing on those dummy newspapers reveals a lot. Sometimes the headlines were bad paste-up jobs. The same dummy articles would be repeated. The text in them would often be nonsense.

We of course jump when our name shows up in print … I still get a kick from a The Far Side cartoon that takes place ‘in the Erickson burrow.’  Here are two more frame grabs that I’ve posted before. Anybody who has loitered too long around CineSavant will know what movies they came from.

And here’s a happy Review for another Book — no, a Magazine — well, how about an issue of a magazine that swelled to the size of a book?

Little Shoppe of Horrors, the brainchild of Richard Klemensen, has been publishing for decades and until the last few years has mostly focused on the output of Hammer Films. As his last issue approaches, it looks as if his magazine has been hijacked by something ‘like nothing we’ve seen before’ — the U.K. Kaiju Gorgo, a beloved Technicolor epic from childhood, when moviegoing was grand and glorious. Being able to review discs of the show was great fun, as good old Gorgo was my hands-down favorite monster as a kid. As an impressionable 9 year-old, everything in that movie looked absolutely real.

MGM generated some handsome still photos and a nifty poster for Gorgo, but zero production stills, and no behind-the-scenes shots of the vast miniatures or the workings of the monster and his towering mother-beast. Associate Lee Kaplan uncovered a couple of shots ten years ago, and that was about it. As it turns out, Lee contributes substantially to the 270-page ‘magazine.’ I see that Ernie Farino is still associated with LSoH, but the prime author and project editor for this issue was Anthony McKay. His massive Gorgo article subtitled ‘Monster of the Kings’ grabbed me from the start — it’s a history of the producers the King Brothers that begins with two decades of films that came before Gorgo. This history lays out the facts about numerous producing partnerships that imported foreign fantasy films for U.S. exploitation, as the Kings did with Toho’s  Rodan. The historical essay also sketches the ambitions of designer-director Eugene Lourie, who wasn’t deterred by the fact that he had to remake his first monster movie twice over.

One surprise in this department was reading about Lourie’s continuing attempts to work again with Ray Harryhausen, after their fruitful  first collaboration.

The core of the book/magazine is a 160 page, day-by-day chronicle of the filming of Gorgo, accompanied by actor and filmmaker bios and an astounding number of stills of the production in progress, coverage we never dreamed existed. We admire the design and craftsmanship in everything we see. We’re surprised by the many big sets constructed and just how much work was poured into everything. Lourie and cameraman Freddie Young coordinated the complex effects shots, composites so clever that some shots completely fooled us. In the course of documenting the shoot, Anthony McKay answers a number of story continuity and logic questions we always had about Gorgo — editing that sometimes jumbles the sequence of events on screen.

MacKay’s well written chronicle had access to all of the King Bros. production files. It details several risky business negotiations — the show was almost finished before the King Bros. lined up their distributors. Only gamblers like the Kings would play these crazy financial games. A series of addendums covers the film’s release rollout, the advertising and even an illustrated gallery of Gorgo toys. Although most of the book is B&W, there are quite a few color plates, especially when the advertising art clicks in. The famous Basil Gogos magazine cover painting for Gorgo is present in full color as well. Something else we didn’t know is that a BBFC fumble resulted in the show being given an ‘X’ rating in the UK … putting it out of reach of the very kid audience that would comprise its core audience.

Little Shoppe of Horrors #52 can be found at  the LSoH U.S.website and  the LSoH UK website.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

It seems odd that this was the week to commemorate the favorite actress June Lockhart, because as soon as we heard the news of her passing, we came across a nice interview with her in a new book — the subject of today’s column is a Book Review.

Through his publishers McFarland & Company, Tom Weaver has a new tome out called  Creature Feature Creators. It’s an interview book featuring a long list of actors, writers, directors and producers associated with fantasy, Sci-fi and horror films. Weaver’s talks with selected celebs let the conversations go where they will, with frequent surprises and colorful opinions.

We’ve read most of Weaver’s output. None of the interviews here are duplicates or repeats from his books. They are instead from magazines — Screem,  Video Watchdog,  Famous Monsters of Filmland,  Fangoria.  It is the first time any of these articles have been published in book form. I was unaware of John Landis’ brief but very surprising interview about directing Vincent Price in the Michael Jackson Thriller musical short subject. Jackson’s treatment of Price on that one was really shabby. (Now why hasn’t that video been released on 4K disc?)

There are nostalgic interviews, like the ones for June Lockhart, Noel Neill and Joan Taylor (look for her sometime in  On Dangerous Ground). We learn about the long and happy Richard Denning – Evelyn Ankers marriage from their daughter, Dee. Weaver salts the text with interesting stills — behind the scenes snaps, cheesecake photos that don’t really represent the movies, interesting posters.

A couple of interviews are with bigger names that began in genre pix (Gary Lockwood) but many are of the unheralded actors that make us fans curious: bit players in Z pix like  Monstrosity or Navy vs. The Night Monster. We maybe get too close to associates of Al Adamson, but in doing so also learn more about legends like John Carradine and J. Carrol Naish, old pros picking up a few bucks in retirement.

We also appreciate the inclusion of a long letter from writer Ted Sherdeman, on the history of his movie  Them! — a full rundown on its production, with studio politics included. The letter was written in answer to a high school student, who Weaver talks about as well.

We meet other ‘marginal’ writers and producers who are not marginal to fans, like ex-actor Jimmy Lydon, or a familiar actor from an Irwin Allen TV show who wrote a well-remembered TV movie with a horror theme.

A couple of intervews are special keepers. Tom gets more coherent information out of Bert I. Gordon on just  The Cyclops than Gordon said about his whole filmography, in his autobio. And Weaver’s uncut & candid Roger Corman interview about  Monster from the Ocean Floor retains full details on the filmmaker’s ‘iffy’ dealings with Hollywood Guild reps, and his even iffier relationship with the film’s official director.

I had fun because actresses like Judy Bamber, Jeanne Cooper and Joyce Holden don’t hold back on frank appraisals of what they were doing, and what they expected of their film careers. The 350 fat pages of text and images are a very good read.

This hasn’t happened with us before: the disc world has been waiting for the new Hammer  Frankenstein and  ‘Cheat Death’ 4K discs. We were equally keen to review Studiocanal’s new remastered disc of Ealing Studio’s 1945 ghost story omnibus  Dead of Night 4K release. But the review disc didn’t arrive … a mis-delivery or something.

The movie is the granddaddy of spooky horror tales. Several episodes are major masterpieces, and even the one comic story is good. The framing story to introduce the tales is truly macabre, and a paradoxical time puzzle, far more mind-bending than we’d expect.

The capper episode starring Michael Redgrave is an all-time classic of psychological possession. The big surprise is that its 15 minutes distill the entire premise of Alfred Hitchcock’s  Psycho.  No joke.

Dead of Night has twice the impact on a big screen. It ought to be great in 4K. Previous discs have all had poor audio, spoiling the presentation. Sooner than later, we’ll track it down for a review … until then, collectors looking for something powerful need to know that it’s available.

We wanted to resist this last item — being somewhat dismayed by A.I. right now — but it got the better of us.

It is a Joe Dante link for a post made just a couple of days ago … a parody of a certain 1950 Sci-fi horror hit, starring big stars resurrected to move and speak through immoral digital manipulation:  “I tell ya sheriff it was like red lightning melted into jelly. It swallowed a man right in front of me!”

I give it an A+ for Elvis and a C+ for Hepburn …. her voice is closer to Sandra Dee !

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Producer and all-round inspiration Michael Arick sent along this great link, to a new YouTube video feature by Mathieu Stern, produced with the Atlas Lens Company.

In beautiful video coverage, we see Monsieur Stern unpacking an original CinemaScope adaptor, loaned to him by a Disney Museum, from its original 1954 box. We get a quick history of how Walt Disney produced the sensational film  20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in ‘Scope when Bausch & Lomb only had a handful of lenses, initial versions that had to be separately focused from the prime 35mm lens. The lens itself weighed 25 pounds, and it had to be adapted to an underwater rig.

Mathieu finds a way to mount the old C’Scope adapter to a modern video camera, and shows us some experimental images he filmed – at the 2:55 ratio — in the Paris aquarium. It’s a very nice thought-piece about the daring days of Disney filmmaking, with old film clips and handsome new shots.

Repeated thanks to the unsinkable Michael McQuarrie, who has sent along a brief but interesting ‘location comparison’ article for everyone favorite film about invading Gargons, Tom Graeff’s  Teenagers from Outer Space. It’s on a page by Showbiz Imagery and Forgotten History.

For us types living near Hollywood, the movie really throws us — all of the locations look very familiar. The page doesn’t show locations that are easier to spot: one scene uses the main building of Hollywood High School. I think some of these locations are around Whitley Terrace, the hill bisected by the Hollywood Freeway, right where Hollywood goes into the Cahuenga Pass. One shot of a tunnel is just above Franklin Avenue. I think it goes under the Hollywood Freeway … or had that section of the freeway even been completed by when Teenagers was filmed?

I’ve copied one of the comparison shots, just above. It’s a view looking South down Las Palmas from Hollywood Boulevard. The shuttered wall on the right is what’s left of the old open-air Las Palmas newsstand that I once thought would be there forever. I include it here because this exact same view shows up often in old movies. The most notable is the famed film noir  Gun Crazy. The first thing that armed robbers John Dall and Peggy Cummins do in Los Angeles, is to jump from the car to look at a newspaper. That iconic church building is prominent in the shot.

Just remember to beware of “thrill-crazed space kids blasting the flesh off humans.”

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

This week marks the debut of what will surely be a promising new feature at Trailers from Hell — a ‘video column’ from director, sage and TFH uber-guru Allan Arkush.

Whether taking about film, music or TV, Arkush has always been a gotta-like raconteur; we’ve checked out all of his older TFH video blogs. Contributing more inside insight and wisdom, the first ‘episode’ of The Last Reel With Allan Arkush is a mini-essay on the old-fashioned moviegoing experience, with a tour of the theater offerings to be had in Hollywood back in the early 1970s, when Arkush first came to town.

Some of the video column was filmed on site … I think ace film editor Arkush may be creating it himself. Episode One’s title is, You Still Going to the Movies?

And correspondent “B” comes ups with a column item that we at first thought was a gag — a link to an article about an unsold pilot for a TV series based on the Billy Wilder movie  Some Like It Hot.

The article is by Mark Evanier on his ‘News From Me’ page. The pilot TV show was made in 1961, didn’t sell and then disappeared just like dozens of other failed pilots adapted from popular movies.

The weird thing here is that stars Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon help launch the pilot, playing their characters from the movie. After one scene, they are transformed into actors Vic Damone and Dick Patterson.

Sounds like a big mistake, or a rumor waiting to be disproven. But the pilot is real …. Mark Evanier’s article contains a link, so we can all see it for ourselves …

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

We start off with something interesting courtesy of a circulated link from Joe Dante.

It’s a new Guardian article by Dalya Alberge about a film Charles Chaplin was actively working on when he died in 1977. Its screenplay is reportedly going to be published.

The biggest hint in the article is that the film is “a fantasy about “Sarapha, a beautiful creature with wings, a bird with a human body, which has the power to cure illness and bring peace to the world.”

I say bring it on for real.

Another un-filmed movie project associated with Charles Chaplin has already been published, in a book dealing with critic/screenwriter James Agee. It’s a full script for an ‘atom war’ idea that Agee hoped Chaplin would film. This was in the late 1940s, just before Chaplin went into exile.

The ‘lost screenplay’ is printed in Wrankovics’ book Chaplin and Agee. The balance of the book is about Agee’s efforts to rescue Chaplin from the cultural lynch mob that tarred him both a pervert and an anti-American Red.

And long-time correspondent Lee Kaplan contributes something very pleasing, a clip to a terrific animated short subject that will get us in a good mood for El dí de los muertos. Without words, it defines the meaning of a Day of the Dead holiday altar.

It’s a brief man & dog story by … Victoria México?  An early title card that appears on the video is Xolo, defined as a breed of Mexican dog. It was a sacred animal for the Aztecs, full name Xoloitzcuintle.

The film is very touching, and very much in keeping with the sentimental, positive meaning of the holiday. Dog lovers uninterested in the feline epic Flow may be charmed.

And you .. Who is waiting for you? … take me to the river…

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson