Hello!

All things fantastic film expert and generous blogger David J. Schow really hit something nice for the holiday week.

This video posted by Nigel Dreiner was taken at the 50th Anniversary Grauman’s Chinese Hollywood re-Premiere of the original, incomparable 1933  King Kong.

We don’t know how the event was arranged, but I long ago learned that a group of fans of Kong created a major attraction for the event. Some of them were well-known effects and stop-motion animation craftsmen, the disciples of Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen that we wrote about in  a popular old DVD Savant post. Their work became a big display in the famed Chinese forecourt, where all the cement signatures and handprints are.

They constructed a duplicate of the giant Kong ‘bust’ like the one used for close-ups in the original movie. It looks great — the eyes, jaw and eyebrows move, just like the original prop.

The 24-minute video shows the expected drive-up of notables. A young Leonard Maltin hosts the event for ET. Just scanning through we see several faces we ought to be able to name, and note RKO optical guru Linwood Dunn, Darlene O’Brien, Robert Clampett, Sally Struthers. A big arrival is Ray Bradbury and Ray Harryhausen, who thanks to Maltin’s prompt, offers a great audio bite about King Kong’s influence on his life and career. The IMDB offers a full list of celeb attendees at  this page.

Also Gary Owens, Leonard Nimoy, Brian Dennehy, and Jerry Mathers. Could that be Ken Osmond with Mathers?  Is that even possible?  Looks like him to me.

Fay Wray shows up at about 12 minutes as the guest of honor. She’s a charmer, a beautiful, classy, and very well-spoken lady. Ms. Wray also looks great posing ‘in the grip’ of the giant ape mockup … once a picture model, always a picture model.

At about 18 minutes comes some on-air E.T. coverage, showing the Kong bust under construction.

 

Full premiere coverage KING KONG 50th Anniversary. 

Also from April of 1983, here’s a New York Times article about an abortive, ‘deflating’ attempt to commemorate the Kong’s Golden Anniversary  at the Empire State Building.

 

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We wanted some Holiday themed items … all we can offer is a link to our  White Christmas review from a few weeks back. Meanwhile …

 

 

There’s nothing like a little lustmord for the Holidays … correspondent Gordon Thomas, responding to Criterion’s recent restored Blu-ray of G.W. Pabst’s  Pandora’s Box, has updated his Bright Lights Film Journal essay.

It’s a rewarding read that discusses the Franz Wedekind source plays, the changing attitudes about sexuality during the Wiemar Republic, and other pre-Pabst silent film adaptations (there were a handful), two of which starred Asta Nielsen.

With the benefit of Thomas’s research, we get an understandable explanation why Pandora’s Box received a tepid reception in Berlin of 1929 — German audiences had a fixed idea of who Lulu should be, and American Louise Books was not her.

 

Of Sexual Hate and Lonely Death 

I translate the caption above (with my amazing German 1 skillset) as:

“You are under the Mistletoe. Now you must let yourself be kissed.”That’s as close as we can get to an appropriate Yuletime Motto. A safe and happy holiday to us all.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hey, it’s a family film: hopeful people making the Holidays as Happy as they can be. Works for me.

 

Hello!

Here’s something we didn’t expect. Every year the National Film Registry adds 25 more titles deemed worthy of restoration, as ‘historically, culturally and aesthetically significant.’  They’ve been doing this since 1989, when the first titles chosen were plenty obvious: The Searchers,  Singin’ in the Rain,  Vertigo.

We take special note that this year’s list includes William Cameron Menzies’ Invaders from Mars, as we’ve always been a major booster of the title. It may not yet ‘hang in the Louvre,’ but it’s a much-deserved honor for a picture that ten years ago was an oddity with a reputation split between ‘Masterpiece’ and ‘Silly Sci-fi loser.”  Not helping was the fact that the show couldn’t be seen in a decent copy.

We think Invaders was chosen because of the major restoration performed several years ago, that attracted a lot of attention. Restoration supervisor Scott MacQueen agrees:  ” I think there’s no question that the 4K Blu-ray, looking as sharp and clean as it does, put the movie back on people’s radar.”  For that we still have Jan Willem Jansen of Ignite to thank … as previously explained, restoring the movie was so difficult, any another rights-holder might very well not have gone to the trouble.

Here’s the new NFR list; we note that today’s review title No Country for Old Men made the cut as well.

 

New films Added to the National Film Registry 

Looking back at the Registry to check what other classic Science Fiction titles have made the cut, we put together this offhand list:

Star Wars  (1989)
2001: A Space Odyssey  (1991)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers  1956 (1994)
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial  (1994)
The Day the Earth Stood Still  1951  (1995)
Flash Gordon Serial  (1996)
The Lost World  1925  (1998)
The Thing from Another World  1951  (2001)
Planet of the Apes  1968  (2001)
Alien  (2002)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind  (2007)
The Terminator  (2008)
The Incredible Shrinking Man  (2009)
The Empire Strikes Back  (2010)
The War of the Worlds  1953  (2011)
Forbidden Planet  (2013)
Seconds  (2015)
20,0000 Leagues Under the Sea  (2016)  – but not 1954!
The Birds  (2016)
A Clockwork Orange  (2020)
Wall-E  (2021)
Return of the Jedi  (2021)
Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan  (2024)
Invaders from Mars 1953  (2024)

 

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And since it just went up, here’s TCM’s obituary montage for the year. They’re always a heartbreaker. TCM’s are always the best, as they can run several minutes (and still feel rushed). I end up watching them at least three times, as there is always a sad surprise or two to throw one’s thinking off. This year got me, to see that a special effects specialist I worked with for two years was included.

On the other hand, it’s good to see so many talented people who appear to have had very long, very productive careers. The TCM montage has served as a reflective holiday pause for so many years …

 

TCM Remembers 2024 

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Still love these guys!  64 years later, I finally understand most of the jokes.

 

Hello!

Advisor-correspondent Gary Teetzel found just a couple of days ago that  Wellesnet writer Ray Kelly is reporting that a new effort is underway to restore/complete Orson Welles’ most prominent unfinished feature film, Don Quixote. Begun in the 1950s, it was the director’s main personal project when he was filming  Touch of Evil for Universal in 1957.

The setbacks suffered by the ill-fated Don Quijote project are legendary. Welles’ stars were Akim Tamiroff as Sancho Panza and Francisco Reiguera as Quizote. Reiguera had roles in 4 Luis Buñuel pictures, and showed up in Louis Malle’s  Viva Maria! and Sam Peckinpah’s  Major Dundee. It was perfect casting until Welles wanted Reiguera to fly to Spain to continue filming, and learned that the old actor was an expatriate who couldn’t go back without being arrested by Franco’s fascists. Oops.

We once reviewed a 1992  ‘restoration’ by Jesús Franco that turned out to be an abomination. Not only was it haphazardly thrown together, it had no access to 65,000 feet of Welles’ footage that were held in Italy. That bounty of unseen film was reportedly returned to Oja Kodar, who controls the rights to the project, in 2017.

It’s a hopeful article. Ray Kelly reports that the progress so far is that all the film holdings are being catalogued, “in anticipation of a scholar-supported assembly and restoration.”

 

Orson Welles’ ‘Don Quixote’ May Get a Second, Better Do-Over 

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And the round-up of appealing future titles is pretty good this holiday — here are twelve desirable items coming between now and March of 2025. The graphic above enlarges.

Kino Lorber has some favorites on tap … on January 21 will arrive Denis Sanders’  Invasion of the Bee Girls, a Sci-fi conspiracy that walks a tightrope between genre thrills and sexy satire. One of Doris Day’s nicest features is the 1958  Teacher’s Pet. She’s paired romantically with Clark Gable, while teaching a night class in journalism. And Kino has a Blu scheduled way out on February 25, for John Wayne’s most unusual action epic  The Conqueror. The radioactive saga of Genghis Khan co-stars Susan Hayward and Pedro Armendariz, plus the nice red sand of a nuclear testing site.

The titles announced for The Criterion Collection in March couldn’t be more eclectic. A 4K release is on tap for H.G. Clouzot’s subversive suspense masterpiece  The Wages of Fear (March 4), starring Yves Montand. Also in 4K are Michael Mann’s modernistic crimer  Thief (March 11) with James Caan. Ditto 4K for Arthur Penn’s neonoir classic  Night Moves (March 25), starring Gene Hackman and Melanie Griffith. Scheduled for March 18 is a remastered Charlie Chaplin silent drama,  A Woman of Paris starring Edna Purviance. Criterion then reaches into the Kaiju grab bag for the most artistic of Toho’s giant monster knock-down-drag’em-outs,  Godzilla vs. Biollante (March 18).

The Warner Archive Collection has some excellent vintage items coming out right now. We’re eager to see a good-looking copy of  Nora Prentiss, a near-macabre noir star vehicle for Ann Sheridan. It features interesting cinematography by James Wong Howe.  The Tall Target is an excellent ‘costume noir’ with Dick Powell as a cop trying to prevent the assassination of Abraham Lincoln on a train to Washington. It was in bad need of a restoration-remaster as well. Both of those titles arrive today. Not due until January 28, just missing the inauguration, is one of the weirdest political thrillers ever made, the pro-dictatorship tale  Gabriel Over the White House. It’s about a President who almost loses his life, but is then inspired by a religious vision. He busts America out of hard times by assuming authoritarian powers, executing criminals in Star Chamber trials, and threatening the Nations of Europe.

And we got confirmation last week that, although no release date has yet been set, the disc boutique Film Masters will be issuing a special edition Blu-ray of Roger Corman’s first Sci-fi production, the humble but solid  Monster from the Ocean Floor with Anne Kimbell. It is said to be a 4K scan from the original negative.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

It’s the tender story of Naga, a ‘deplorable’ of the year 2508, who doesn’t appreciate the blessings of Democracy.

 

Hello!

Dick Dinman’s final DVD Classics Corner On the Air podcast for 2024 is up; this time around he’s covering the Criterion disc of Howard Hawks’ Scarface with critic and author Joseph McBride.

Also on the episode’s discussion docket are Criterion’s recent discs of  Pandora’s Box,  Paper Moon and the  Val Lewton double bill. Here’s looking forward to 2025, Dick!

 

Dick Dinman and Joseph McBride on  Scarface 

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We at CineSavant are constantly calling out voice talent (and actor) Paul Frees, whose voice is heard so often in 1950s films, he must have been working every day. He’s all over George Pal’s pictures, and has an on-screen part in the original  The War of the Worlds. He narrates uncounted Disney shows and does odd voices for monster movies; his tone can be intelligent and authoritative or outright creepy. Once you’ve pegged Frees’ particular sound, he pops up everywhere. The over-use part came to a head with 1960’s  Spartacus, where it seems that every random offscreen senator or soldier is Frees … it’s actually distracting.

The ominous creepy Frees horror story read can be heard at this YouTube excerpt, the audio prologue to  Burn, Witch, Burn. The visuals are not from the original movie, nor is the ending joke (which I didn’t know was there at first, honest).

Haven’t memorized Paul Frees’s voice?  Contributor Michael McQuarrie sends along an Internet Archive link to 5 radio spots for what has become Frees’s most famous gig — recording all of the creep-out audio bites for Disneyland’s original Haunted Mansion ride. The versatile Frees even provides the voice for ‘Granny Ghoul’ in radio spot #3.

 

The Haunted Mansion – 1969 Radio Spots
Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

It’s Bronson vs. Steiger:  ¿Quíen es más macho?

 

Hello!

We received a great little note over the weekend. I assume that many Column items are old news to some CineSavant readers, but I suspect they might interest folk that don’t necessarily stay current with everything in disc / film – related web blab.

Last Saturday we posted three frame grabs from old films shot on Los Angeles streets, of movie marquees on Sunset Blvd., Wilshire Blvd. and Downtown. I could roughly guess the year they were taken, but nothing more.

The note is from ‘Murderous Ink,‘ who describes himself as “a sort of movie blogger living in Japan, and researching and writing about old films esp. prewar/postwar Japanese films and classic Hollywood film noirs.”  His English-language website is called  Enic-CinE, with the tagline, ‘Images of the past, if we can find them.’  One of M’s articles that was news to me, is about the use of Uranium in old-style Sepia Tone film prints.

Anyway, Murderous took it on himself to follow up on our time machine trip to the early 1950s. You will want to enlarge his newspaper image captures:

Hi Glenn, I am an avid fan of your website and always enjoy your insightful and very entertaining posts and reviews. I was particularly fascinated by your recent post with the frame grabs from the L.A. street cruising films from the ‘fifties. This may or may not be of interest to you, but I tried to identify the specific date of these films.

First, the giant Warner Theater in downtown L.A. showing Young Man with a Horn: Searching the movie ads in Los Angeles Times archive, I found that it started on March 3, 1950 at three Warners houses (Hollywood, Downtown, and Wiltern) and ran for 2 weeks, ending on March 16. In your screen shot we can read “LAST 2 DAYS” on the smaller display under the large movie title marquee. This ad from March 15, 1950 says “LAST 2 DAYS!”  Their main ad is for Perfect Strangers, which would start two days later. So, that street cruising film must have been shot on March 15, 1950.

 

The second screen shot of the little Oriental Theater on Sunset in Hollywood: Browsing through L.A. Times ads again, I found that the Oriental Theater ran Singin’ in the Rain and The Pride of St. Louis between June 11 and 13, 1952. It was also booked as a Saturday kid matinee on the 14th. From the 15th forward they ran Singin’ with Fritz Lang’s Rancho Notorious. So, the uninterrupted ‘trip down Sunset Blvd.’ take was filmed between June 11 and 13, 1952. The ad below is from June 11, 1952.

 

The last image is of the smallish El Rey Theater on Wilshire, in the Miracle Mile district. Again, searching through L.A. Times ads from 1951, I found that the El Rey ran The Frogmen and Fugitive Lady between July 27 and August 9, 1951. Trying to narrow it down further, I thought, “how about the weather during this week?  It seems a nice clear day.”  I consulted the NOAA database, which reported that there was no precipitation between June 27 and August 8, 1951. Of course, it’s Los Angeles, so it’s always a clear nice day. The ad below is from July 27 L.A. Times.

 

Anyway, keep up good work!  — Murderous Ink

 

Pretty neat, huh?  What a nice surprise. Before the Internet, this research would require Murderous to fly across the Pacific and spend a day in our central library.

 

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For a chaser, correspondent Michael McQuarrie circulated this clip from The Ed Sullivan Show, and we couldn’t resist.

When the music starts, we think ‘oh no, he’s lip-synching. But then it becomes apparent that Jones is singing live to a recorded orchestra. The fever was BIG for  Thunderball over Christmas that year — at age 13, I was grabbed by a color ad in the comics section of the newspaper.

Jones belts it out really well, methinks … the end of his vocal on the soundtrack was always a laugh, the way he holds the final lyric  “BA-A-A-L-L-L”  until his voice finally gives out. He found a good compromise finale for this performance … and kept a straight face.

 

Tom Jones “Thunderball” December 5, 1965. 

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

‘Day of Infamy’… still as defining for my generation as 11/22/63 and 9/11/01.