Hello!

Very good Sci-fi news … Dennis Bartok of Deaf Crocodile Films has announced that 2026 will see a 4K Ultra HD release of the much-praised but seldom-seen Czech speculative fantasy Krakatit.

Krakatit is adapted from a 1924 novel by Karel Čapek, whose play R.U.R. coined the word robot. It’s about a new explosive that scares everybody … especially when the formula can’t be located.

The 1948 movie is one of the few Atom-age Sci-fi suspense films from the Eastern Bloc. It directly addresses the issue of scientific morality that came with The Bomb — money and politics take control. The movie is noted for its suspense and the strange, bleak style imposed by its director, experimental filmmaker Otakar Vávra: ‘Nightmare memories overpower the mind of the leading character.’

So far, the word on release timing is that Krakatit will be one of the first Deaf Crocodile releases of 2026.

And, we know that CineSavant isn’t exactly proper reading for Kindergarten, but I found myself asking whether I should reprint this choice item purloined appropriated from the kindly writings of the generous and hopefully lawsuit-averse David J. Schow.

David kept his caption simple, with the statement

“Nobody did ballyhoo like the 1950s.”

According to a Tom Weaver interview at a fun site called  The Astounding B Monster, this is an actual page from the Hollywood Trade Paper The Motion Picture Herald. It’s described as a double-page ad, so maybe there’s a second page with a list of theaters and their record-setting box office takes for the week. Thanks to correspondent Edward Parker Bolman just pointed me in the right direction.

A lot of creative advertising was cooked up for this 1958 winner, but double entendres this lewd weren’t on billboards back in 1958. In any case, what does a prude like myself really know about fun vulgarity?

And finally, we were surprised to get an immediate solution for the Mystery Photo uploaded here  last Tuesday, just for the fun of seeing if anybody could identify it.

We thought the shot of a woman about to grapple with a man was from some movie or TV movie that wouldn’t be easy to identify, nor likely worth the trouble either. She looked a little like Elke Sommer, but hers was not an unique look in the 1960s, and neither were her hairstyle and the costume she’s wearing.

Well, we soon received Two dead-right answers. Correspondent Scott Patterson proved his claim by finding a matching image at a review by Mark Throop at the  Movies ala Mark page. At almost the same time, longtime reader, advisor and terrific researcher Edward Sullivan solved the ‘mystery’ as well, and sent another photo to back up his find.

The mystery photo is of Elke Sommer … it’s from a 1968 movie called The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz. Nothing solves a question better than a matching shot of the same woman in the same costume … and Ed’s picture isn’t faded at all. Here are all three in a row. Oh … correspondent Jon Paul Henry did some color work on the original faded photo, which now looks much better.

Thanks Scott, Ed and Jon. Anyone have a real ‘mystery photo’ to share?  People seem to like them, even if they remain mysteries.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

This announcement of a new book is about a writer I know as a film critic, although the man in question has worn so many hats that pinning him down to one vocation doesn’t do him justice. We’re reviewed Joseph McBride’s books on Billy Wilder and Ernst Lubitsch as well as his handsome collection of film writing; he’s now written an account of his own career,  I Loved Movies, But . . .. It arrives on November 21.

We first knew of McBride through a book he co-authored on John Ford back in the 1970s, when he was already pursuing a career as a film writer. It was years later that I found that Joe had a credit on Allan Arkush’s Rock ‘n’ Roll High School. Back in 1970 Orson Welles enlisted him to play a role in his feature The Other Side of the Wind, a project only completed in 2018 long after Welles passed away. McBride discusses his four overlapping careers, as a journalist, book author, screenwriter, and teacher. He’s written for a daily newspaper and been a key reviewer for Daily Variety. He’s written multiple books on John Ford and Orson Welles, and been the main writer behind many AFI career celebrations.

In the foreward to I Loved Movies, But . . ., author Jonathan Lethem describes McBride as a tenacious pursuer of his obsessions, as shown in books on the Kennedy Assassination and two fascinating books on Frank Capra, exposing the director’s misrepresentations of his career accomplishments, and his hidden life as a stealth informer during the McCarthy era. A  second book chronicled McBride’s legal battle to get the first book published. McBride cheefully describes himself as a stubborn Irishman, proudly explaining that his surname helped him get a crucial interview with John Ford, who gave few if any interviews.

McBride’s career autobiography is in the form of an extended interview — his story comes out “in a candid, wide-ranging conversation with a longtime friend, the film historian and baseball biographer Danny Peary,” and it covers “formative childhood traumas, Hollywood adventures, investigative reporting, landmark biographies and decades of teaching.”  It comes a year after his retirement from 22 years of teaching at San Francisco State University. We have always liked Joseph McBride’s argumentatitve voice … when he latches onto an important point, he doesn’t let go. We’re looking forward to reading his new book.

←  Steve Nielson challenged me with a movie quiz … except he doesn’t have the answer, and we have no real expectation of finding one. So this is just for fun.

In his old papers Steve found this 4×5 transparency, a BTS still from some feature film. It’s completely faded, so the color you see is just a one-click correction on GIMP. It is a much larger image, which can be made bigger by zooming or opening in a new window.

Anyone have an idea who the actress is, or what film or TV show it comes from?  It would seem a 1960s picture for sure, and the woman looks generally like Elke Sommer … although it could be a an Elke Sommer stunt double or any of 1,000 similar actresses of the day.

Anyway, we just thought we’d put this ‘out there’ for fun. Please write in if you happen to know, or have a good guess.  (Note, 11 12 25: two readers found the answer. I’ll post it on Saturday.)

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Some fast items today at CineSavant, no waiting.  Correspondent Christopher Rywalt  found this AV Club article by Matt Schimkowitz about the sidebar subject ‘movie trailer narrators.’

I identify with the piece because, when editing promos and trailers at The Cannon Group in the late 1980s, I had many recording sessions with the ‘king’ of the voiceover talents Don LaFontaine. Mo and Yo liked his gravely, hard-edged delivery so much, that he was heard on all kinds of pictures, not just idiotic Charles Bronson vigilante movies. For prices ranging up to a $1000 for a half-hour session, he rode around town in a chauffeured limo, speaking on a radiophone to line up his next gig a few blocks away. The limo would be parked in front of a recording studio (or our Cannon HQ) for twenty minutes, and then he’d be off.

If the head of the department Richard Smith were there, La Fontaine might listen to some direction. Whenever I ran in with some tacky promo narration for him to read, he’d ignore me, read it his way, and walk out. It was always good!

This YouTube Godzilla Promo has been circulating, so I asked advisor & mentor Gary Teetzel to explain it for us. What’s it for?  Is it part of an upcoming movie?  Gary’s response:

Every year Toho uses November 3 — the anniversary of  Gojira’s original 1954 release — to celebrate ‘Godzilla Day’ and promote any upcoming Godzilla projects: films, anime, video games, major promotional partnerships, etc. As part of the festivities, they have, for the past 6 years or so, produced a live-action short film using traditional man-in-suit effects. Between 2020 and 2024, they re-used a Godzilla suit originally built for Godzilla: Final Wars, and usually tied the shorts to some film celebrating an anniversary. For example, on the 50th anniversary of Godzilla vs. Hedorah, the short subject had Godzilla battling Hedorah. The shorts between 2020 to 2024 were loosely connected, with some ending in a cliffhanger resolved in the next year’s short. Last year’s short, with Godzilla and Jet Jaguar battling King Ghidorah, seemed to bring this cycle of short films to a close.

This year’s short uses a suit from the so-called ‘Millenium’ era of Godzilla features (those made between 1999 and 2004). It’s starting a new cyle of Godzilla Day short subjects, ending with a cliffhanger to be resolved in next year’s short. Toho also made a few Godzilla Day short films using modern CGI effects that were separate from the “man-in-suit” shorts, but doesn’t appear to have made one this year.

So that’s the long answer to your simple question: It’s not a teaser, not a part of an upcoming movie, just a stand-alone short film. Toho also used Godzilla Day to announce that the sequel to Godzilla Minus One will be titled Godzilla Minus Zero. It is currently filming, with a release in Japan likely slated for late 2026.

Thanks Gary !

And correspondent David Bush offers a link to this YouTube show from Adam Savage, a part-tour of a Paramount vault. Savage apparently does more of these — the YouTube page that comes up lists another one called Secrets of the Paramount Film Archives.

The video piece features the exec director of the archive, Chuck Woodfill. We get a glimpse of the facilities, and then are given a show-and-tell presentation of movie formats from the very beginning, right through umpteen-zillion videotape formats that I am doing my best to forget about, in retirement. Woodfill’s explanation of things like ‘vinegar syndrome’ are very good.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

A welcome reaction to last Saturday’s link to the old DVD Savant review for Roger Vadim’s 1960  Blood and Roses. That title is on the top of our ‘please revive and restore’ list, although we’re not certain that the scenes we want restored were ever in a finished copy of the film.

We’ve often ruminated on whatever became of the ‘mystery incarnation’ of the Carmilla vampire, the slimy, shapeless monster that is meant to molest Elsa Martinelli. We think the missing shots are meant to come at the climax of the surreal montage sequence, a highlight of Vadim’s film. We’ve read helpful posts by Tim Lucas divulged details on the scene, as written up in the film’s paperback novelization.

Now correspondent S.M. Guariento has written in with a dire quote quote from his book on movie novelizations, which I last wrote up in a CineSavant colummn from  March 11 of this year. Mr Guariento has the quote in its entirety. Here’s the part of his letter pertinent to Vadim’s … et mourir de plaisir / Blood and Roses.  S.M.:

Hi Glenn —

. . . and it was good to revisit your very fair assessment of Vadim’s film, which reminds me I need to give that German disc another spin soon. Incidentally, that blob-monster dream sequence was, you may recall, included in full in the film’s U.S. novelization by Robin Carlisle (Hillman 1960); I included a snippet from it in  Light Into Ink (p4). Did you ever hunt down a copy of the tie-in…? Anyway, here’s a longer excerpt from the scene in question:

Georgia wakened with a violent start. The daze that had engulfed her all that day in bed was completely gone, and her mind felt crystal-clear and alert. Pervading her, however, was a sharp sensation of fear. She could not imagine what caused it, but she had the impression it was the fear that had wakened her so suddenly. Perhaps, also, it was the fear that had cleared her head. She lay there staring at the foot of her bed, wondering how she would sleep away the rest of the night in this funny mood.

A wide, flat, wet-skinned creature, very black in color, appeared over the bottom edge of the bed and began slowly to creep up over her feet. It watched her with two elongated eyes. Moving in waves like a snail it came on so gradually that for a long minute she took it rather calmly. Then she became aware that she could not move her feet. The monster had crawled over them – they seemed paralyzed. The odd fear she had been feeling suddenly focused on this apparition. It was as though her fear had been waiting for its arrival. She wanted desperately to cry out but the cry choked in her throat. She could not make a sound.

The monster was now up to her knees. It felt like a very warm, very heavy blanket. With an enormous effort she pulled her legs up to her chest and pressed herself up against the backboard of the bed. She felt curiously helpless and lethargic. As it came closer, she saw that it was really a dark green, not black at all.

There was a tapping at the window the distracted her for a moment. In the water outside the window she caught sight of Lisa swimming, her hair trailing about her head like seaweed. Lisa tapped at the window to get Georgia’s attention. She pointed to the monster and urgently beckoned her to get out of bed.
The dark green horror was now only inches away from her.
It was almost touching her.
It touched her.

With the jolting start Georgia wrenched herself free of its spell and fled to the window and opened it. Lisa reached her hand out of the water that flowed by across the face of the window and took Georgia by the wrist. She pulled her out through the window into the water with her. It was cool and pleasant, the water, and easy to move about in.

Once again, a despised tie-in novel comes to the rescue!

Cheers!

And we’ve also been informed of an upcoming Severin Films boxed set,  The Eurocrypt of Christopher Lee Collection 3.

We eagerly covered the first two sets, 2021’s the First Collection which featured Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel and 2022’s Collection Volume Two that headlined Tempi duri per vampiri.

We would of presumed that the filmography of hidden Chris Lee features would have been tapped out, but Severin came up with more desirable items: the 1960 Beat Girl with Adam Faith, Shirley Anne Field
and Oliver Reed, 1960’s The Hands of Orlac with Mel Ferrer and Dany Carrel; Antonio Margheriti’s 1963 The Virgin of Nuremberg with Rosanna Podestà and , the 1979 Arabian Adventure with Milo O’Shea and John Ratzenberger, A Feast at Midnight with Robert Hardy and Edward Fox, and John Spira’s odd documentary The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee,.

The disc set is due on February 24, so it’s at present a pre-order item. For us, three of these pictures are unknown quantities. I liked Hands of Orlac on TV as a kid, when I first knew who Christopher Lee was. Seeing it in the French version should be an extra treat. I never liked the way The Virgin of Nuremberg looked but want to give it another chance; it has to have a better appearance than the miserable VHS I saw way back when. And we always wanted to see Beat Girl, which promises some decent nasty thrills. The music’s by the John Barry Seven, so I already know what it’ll sound like.

Severin has prepared a long sales trailer, here.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

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