Hello!

I won’t name-drop, but some live-wire genre creatives love to trade links to odd bits of fantastic film found online; we happily disseminate them further, with comments, and gratitude.

The 1920s and ’30 were great years for expressionistic short subjects based on horror stories. We learned, for instance, that several  Mexican horror pioneers were rich kids that had studied in Europe, and came back with big ideas about film art.

It happens all the time — in high school, I must have seen three student films where some guy posed his girlfriend on a sea cliff wearing a fancy dress. Add one audio recital of a poem about ‘the lost Lenore,’ and voila — an instant 8mm student masterpiece.

These Italian silent short subjects based on Edgar Allan Poe stories are a little more accomplished. One is frequently cited by gorehound horror fans, as being way ahead of its time.

The links are to Magnaghi Hoepli’s 1936 ‘The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,’ aka

and Mario Monicelli’s 1934 ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’ aka

Mario Monicelli became a famed film writer and director ( The Organizer,  Big Deal on Madonna Street).

But who needs Italian art, when Perversion awaits?

Last week Michael McQuarrie sent us a good link about the oddball pop seer The Amazing Criswell … who we winked at as essentially harmless.

This 1965 public service film is hosted by the popular Los Angeles newsman George Putnam, who harangues the audience with a similar style of stentorian address. Screaming about moral decay and Communist conspiracy, Putnam condemns smut publications catering to the raincoat crowd, that go against our decent Judeo-Christian values!

The film is Perversion for Profit, produced by  ‘Citizens for Decent Literature Inc.,’ which would eventually ‘expand its obscenity focus to include rock music and devil worship.’

The disturbing / hilarious upshot is that Perversion for Profit achieves the opposite of its aim — it promotes the sleaze. The visuals are an encyclopedic advertisement for adult magazines that Putnam claims will turn us all into homosexuals, lesbians and sex killers. I saw this at age 13, and was instantly super-curious to know more about the ‘perversions’ named by Putnam … time to consult a dictionary!

It takes five minutes for Putnam to state his case. He repeats it, practically frothing at the mouth, for half an hour. I wonder — did ‘Citizens for Decent Literature Inc.’ ever collect money when they screened Perversion for Profit?.

Wikipedia says that the picture was financed by Charles Humphrey Keating, a banker, financier and conservative activist. He was the man behind the legal campaign to suppress Russ Meyer’s  Vixen!  Keating dropped out of the anti-smut crusade in the late 1980s, when he became a convicted felon in a savings and loan scandal.

I watched Putnam for years at KTLA, until he was replaced by Hal Fishman. We just thought he was self-importantly loud and funny. Putnam is said to have been a model for Ted Knight’s ‘Ted Baxter’ newsman character on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Perversion awaits at this Archive.org link:

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

First up is the business of a Book Review.

Last week I noted that a couple of hot books had arrived to review; we wasted no time before crawling through Tom Weaver’s  From Page to Silver Scream, from Bear Manor Media.

For several years Tom has been editing a series of ‘Script from the Crypt’ books; I’ve reviewed some of them here. This new item is his work alone, and he’s hoping it will catch on and yield future volumes. The prospect of that seems entirely possible.

The format focuses on books that became noted fantastic movies, mostly horror pictures. The majority are fan favorites — but in all but a few cases the source books are not commonly read today. In his autobiographical confession up front Tom admits that he wasn’t always a reader, but that catching up with some of this arcane literature was a rewarding step that he’d like to encourage in other fans.

His choice of films is eclectic — horror milestones like  The Old Dark House as well as the minor Sci-fi item  The Navy vs. The Navy vs. the Night Monsters, which is of worth because its source author is the noted Murray Leinster.

After reading Tom’s introductory chapter I did what anyone would — I zeroed in on his coverage devoted to a favorite,  The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham. His 25 pages on that book and movie start with a breakdown of every book chapter. Then we get a comparison / contrast with the finished film, some notes about the production and other observations. Each chapter reproduces a paperback cover or two (my crumbling 1964 copy is represented), and adds an unusual still or two, in this case, some BTS shots of the Triffid creatures. The extra kick in the Triffids chapter are two drafts of what read like early treatments for the movie, each of which presents ideas left undeveloped in the finished film.

The well-read Gary Teetzel may know all of the books that Weaver covers, but most are new to me. I forgot that  The Maze was sourced from a book; Tom includes Salvador Dali illustrations from an early print edition. A piece on  Donovan’s Brain has production back stories, establishing that actor Lew Ayres tried his best to slink out of the movie, just before the cameras rolled.

Tom goes in for some ‘quality’ titles, diving into Anya Seton’s  Dragonwyck. He uses his book breakdown to make a case for the movie as Vincent Price’s first go at the kind of characterization he perfected for Roger Corman’s later Poe series.

There’s a lot to learn here, even, as I said, with books I’ve already read. The authors covered include Richard Matheson, Sax Rohmer, Arthur Conan Doyle, Curt Siodmak, Edgar Wallace, J.B. Priestley, Fritz Leiber, Marie Belloc Lowndes and Raymond F. Jones. With Tom’s extra goodies, it’s an entertaining read that allows one to pop about from one interesting title to the next. I never liked the movie  The 27th Day but the coverage of it here allows me to learn more about John Mantley’s source book, at arms’s length.

The book makes an impressive quiz for know-it-all genre fans: what Boris Karloff mad doctor movie is based on a book called The Edge of Running Water?  That eliminates this Savant from the know-it-all bench.

Today we take a break from Matt Rovner’s ongoing CineSavant articles on the radio and film writer-director Arch Oboler, to see some reportage on Matt’s continuing research on the man.

The link is to Matt’s Library of Congress blog article on some of the things he has been uncovering from the LoC’s massive holdings on Oboler. Among the items Matt has examined are Oboler’s home movies, and a wealth of film footage he shot in Africa. Also described are film elements from This Precious Freedom, a film he shot for General Motors in 1940, that was never released. In it Claude Rains returns from a vacation to find that America has been taken over by a Fascist conspiracy. The show was eventually adapted into the very odd 1945 feature Strange Holiday.

The article also covers a TV pilot that wasn’t picked up, and home movies of the house that Frank Lloyd Wright built for Oboler in Malibu, the one featured in Oboler’s Science fiction feature  Five.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Dependable Dick Dinman has a guest on his podcast, actor Clint Walker, to talk about his well-remembered 50s TV show Cheyenne, which just arrived in a massive Warner Archive Collection box. It was one of the first TV shows I remember seeing. Before digging into it, we can hear Clint reminisce a little bit. The recording comes from Dinman’s interview archive, as Mr. Walker passed away in 2018.

So many celebs of the past are disappearing. This is a reminder to start watching Cheyenne episodes … I always watch the first couple of shows, and then go for episodes with favorite actors.

High on the list of things you really didn’t need is this link from Michael McQuarrie, the Archive.org web publication of a book of prognostications by the one and only The Amazing Criswell. The 100% flaky seer was made (in)famous by via appearances in the flakier films of Edward D. Wood, Jr..

It’s 150 pages of looney predictions, leading up to the big one … the final word from the great seer is that the world will end on August 18, 1999, whether Prince records a song or not.

Criswell really belongs in a Museum of Self-Promotion. In today’s era of total disinformation, all the time, his impact is benign. And how do we know that the world didn’t end in 1999?  The last 26 years could be just a dream.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

June will be a superb month for fans of classic pix from The Warner Archive Collection. Pictured above are Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell from Howard Hughes’ weirdly distorted comedy-noir potboiler  His Kind of Woman, also starring Vincent Price.

That’s only the flashiest Blu-ray bait for the month. Also on the docket are —

Elia Kazan’s masterpiece  Splendor in the Grass with Natalie Wood & Warren Beatty; its colors ought to be sensational in HD.

Robert Wise’s  Executive Suite, an all-star battle for a company’s presidency, with William Holden, June Allyson, Fredric March, Barbara Stanwyck, Shelley Winters and several others.

John Cromwell’s  The Enchanted Cottage, a twisted romantic fantasy with Robert Young and Dorothy McGuire, and a weird take on beauty vs ugliness.

King Vidor’s  The Citadel is a worthy prestige classic; it stars Robert Donat and Rosalind Russell and was nominated for a pile of Oscars.

and MGM’s  A Date with Judy ought to please fans angling for a Technicolor musical … it co-stars Jane Powell, Elizabeth Taylor, Wallace Beery, Carmen Miranda and Robert Stack.

The appeal of the Archive Collection is to see the beautiful digital remasters … we’re so accustomed to older transfers of these films, sometimes just 16mm TV copies. The remastering of Technicolor pictures is almost always a revelation … new colors, new clarity.

And we can’t resist … Michael McQuarrie links us to the Internet Archive’s online collection of the entire set of Topps Mars Attacks! trading cards, the inspiration for the 1996 feature film by Tim Burton (which is still a favorite).

For a lot of ’60s kids, these cards were our first contact with outright gore being sold to minors as entertainment. Close associate Todd Stribich invested in an entire original set of cards, which you can bet is locked up securely. Their value continues to accrue.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

We’re back after a week of vacation, a very healthy rest. It was so diverting that I’ve been running around the house having to remember how everything works and what our routines were.

Charlie Largent launched reviews so I didn’t have to think about the page at all, which gave me real peace of mind. Now, with palmy breezes behind us, we’ll get back to the ususal reality stuff that helps us maintain equilibrium.

Much has arrived in our absence. A big pile of attractive discs to review, but also two new books that sound exciting, Tom Weaver’s  From Page to Silver Scream and Daniel Kehlmann’s biography of German director G.W. Pabst,  The Director. Give me a few days on those.

And at least one new review for Saturday, while we get the dynamos of production (cough) churning here at CineSavant. Gotta admit that it’s nice to be missed a little. We’re hoping to take a similar break in the Fall.

Correspondent Jonathan Gluckman points us to this YouTube upload by SabuCat of a deleted musical number from the Fred Astaire / Paulette Goddard musical  Second Chorus. No known film copy is known to have survived, but Jeff Joseph’s company has up-rezzed a Betamax tape to HD.

The deleted song is about ‘a ghost that lives upstairs,’ with the ghost danced by famed choreographer Hermes Pan. The comments on the YouTube post critique the AI process used to clean up the low-quality digital source. We’re shown a bit of comparison. The final product ‘improves’ but also revises, cleaning up Astaire’s face while erasing details, creases, shadows. Presuming that the Betamax source was frame-rate adapted to NTSC TV 30fps, some odd motion effects show up as well.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Yes, we usually don’t post on Mondays. The CineSavant Page is going dark for a few days. Nothing sinister, negative, or suchlike, so no need for concern.

New reviews will still be posted at Trailers from Hell on the normal days Tuesday and Saturday. It’s just that they won’t be promoted here or on my Facebook page for a couple of spins of the wheel, maybe the last day of April.

The place to check on Tuesday and Thursday will be my CineSavant Archives Page at Trailers from Hell. Everything that gets posted at TFH shows up there instanfry… indstilly… right away. In other words, a new review should be up some time tomorrow, Tuesday the 22nd.

Sorry for the break. DVD Savant and CineSavant have been up for 24 years and 8 months without a whole lotta interruptions. Not that we can’t be tempted away…

Watch this space too … The CineSavant Column will be back very soon.

Oh, I almost forgot. Does CineSavant need to be more aggressive, confrontational?  Here’s  Sierra Charriba saying hello.  ↗  His message is pointless but he has the right attitude:  “CineSavant will be back!  Who you send against me now?”

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson