Hello!

Correspondent Christopher Rywalt sent along this rather arcane aviation blog piece on The Helicopter from GOG. The first scene of the Ivan Tors sci-fi picture features an eccentric-looking twin-rotored ‘eggbeater’ helicopter that flits about a desert landscape like a hummingbird, in very good-looking 3-D. Through this blog post we learn that it wasn’t a production ‘copter but an experimental design that never made a big military sale… something about it being too lightweight and difficult to maintain. I remember building a plastic model kit of it when I was ten or so.

GOG likely remains the most lasting record of this particular design. It was surely loaned to GOG ‘free’ for promotional consideration. The blog tells us about the test pilot as well as the helicopter; if you scroll upward to the previous entry about a massive ‘sky crane’ helicopter, you can read more about Howard Hughes and Ava Gardner.

It also tells us a bit about the movie: a page from the screenplay lists the film’s working title as “Space Station U.S.A.,” and we see a color shot of heavy-duty fork lift being used as a crane for the 3-D Naturalvision camera.

→  Chris Rywalt’s item about the 3-D GOG arrived coincidentally with the 3-D Film Archives’ announcement that they’ll be remastering a rare 3-D feature made in England, directed by and starring Dennis O’Keefe… The Diamond Wizard. We’re told that it wasn’t shown in 3-D when new; the 3-D fad faded almost as soon as it got going. The leading lady is Margaret Sheridan, the Howard Hawks contractee known mostly for The Thing from Another World.

Since the diamonds in question are synthetic, the movie’s somehow been listed here and there as a Science Fiction film. The synopsis reads like a T-Man caper about stolen currency, with Scotland Yard helping out. We’ll be hoping for an exciting conclusion, described as a chase and a shoot-out. The much-appreciated review blog Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings tells us that some of the chase uses the giant old wooden escalators in the original London Underground, the ones featured in the silent classic Underground. The writer of Variety’s July ’54 review didn’t see it in 3-D, but wishes he had.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

David J. Schow sends along a link to a fun documentary trailer for fans of vintage journalism and publishing. Linotype the Film is about the great Ottmar Mergenthaler and his fabulous invention the Linotype machine. It’s also my cue to encourage readers to track down Samuel Fuller’s most personal production Park Row, a tabloid publishing saga that incorporates the arrival of Mergenthaler’s revolutionary device. The trailer is enjoyable just to see one of the few still-working Linotypes in action — keeping it operational must be a machinist’s dream job.

An enthusiast is asked, ‘How does the Linotype fit in with new technology?’ … answer: “It Doesn’t.”

Any Jerry Goldmsith fans out there?  When I reviewed the movie The Public Eye I didn’t know that composer Jerry Goldsmith wrote and recorded an entire music score for the picture — which director Howard Franklin rejected and replaced with one by Mark Isham.

Intrada is offering a CD of Goldsmith’s Unused Score for The Public Eye.  Gary Teetzel tells us to look down where it says MORE INFO/TRACK LIST and click on TRACK LIST to listen to some audio samples. Prior to this release, fans speculated that Jerry Goldsmith may have recycled the score into L.A. Confidential. We can now rule out that theory, but Goldsmith did apparently end up recycling the theme in a different film: the American remake of The Vanishing.

And finally, I couldn’t resist this Studiocanal teaser trailer of restored features. It’s a bald promo for the label, but also a fun guessing game of interesting titles… at the moment, Studiocanal’s vast library is providing some of the best, and best-looking, vintage rarities licensced by Criterion and Kino. Yep, I’m ready for a super-restored Nights of Cabiria as well.

Boy, in that particular frame Giulietta Masina looks like somebody else … Jean Seberg?

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

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Wow, two disc reviews today and both are U.S. products and Region A. No complications. They do everything but wear masks and show their vaccine cards.

First up are some interesting disc announcements. Yesterday, the Warner Archive Collection named four titles on the way for July. The first two are well-known quantities. Errol Flynn stars in Objective Burma!, the brutal WW2 combat film that offended the Brits; Hollywood Ten writers Alvah Bessie and Lester Cole really let loose with the anti-Japanese hate invective. Then, Gene Kelly, Esther Williams and Frank Sinatra star in the Technicolor Arthur Freed picture Take Me Out to the Ball Game. It’s Busby Berkeley’s last full job of feature musical direction, credited.

The second two are fairly obscure thrillers that will excite hardcore noir aficionados. →  Step by Step re-teams Lawrence Tierney and Anne Jeffreys from his breakthrough Dillinger, in a weird wartime spy tale set on a California beach. We’ll have to find out how ‘noir’ it is.

I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes ↑  is one I’ve wanted to see for ages; for a while it was thought to be lost. It’s the second film produced by Walter Mirisch, when he was at Monogram — Walter was sufficiently shrewd to use source stories from Cornell Woolrich, guaranteeing built-in hardboiled noir interest.

We’ve also got confirmation for two disc releases from The Film Detective. The cringe-inducing Frankenstein’s Daughter is due out on October 19, with extras; it’s the second of the four Richard E. Cunha horror shows from 1958-59.

Two weeks earlier on October 5, the same label will issue a Blu of the excellent noir The Amazing Dr. X aka The Spiritualist. It stars Turhan Bey, Lynn Bari and Cathy O’ Donnell — I hope they eventually spell her name correctly. The expressive visuals come courtesy of camerama wizard John Alton. If the transfer does Alton justice it’ll be a great disc.

We finish the Column with a list of links from Gary Teetzel. They’re video files from Getty Images, Newsreel Clips with fun film connections. There’s a stack of them, so I’ll get right into Gary’s notes:

1.) Footage from the L.A. premiere of TOMB OF LIGEIA, with fans taking part in a costume contest to award the title of ‘Mr. Gruesome.’ Vincent Price is of course present. Elizabeth Shepherd seems to be there as well, although the narrator never bothers to point her out. She doesn’t look very happy! (Note: John McElwee says that the actress we think is Shepherd, is really Maila ‘Vampire’ Nurmi, and he has a promo flyer to back it up.) Other guests include Caroll Borland from Mark of the Vampire and Elsa Lanchester. Watch as Forry Ackerman rudely shoves the latest issue of Famous Monsters in front of Lanchester. Only the back cover is seen and all he does is startle the great actress.

2.) Boris Karloff, the Terror Titan of Tennis. Didn’t Karloff play cricket?  He doesn’t humiliate himself, unlike his co-players — the synch audio plays like a laugh track.

3.) Boris is one of several celebrities attending a birthday party for Joe E. Brown’s daughter.

4.) A brief shot of Boris and his wife Evelyn attending a movie premiere, 1954.

5.) Another Boris movie premiere snippet.

6.) Bela Lugosi donates blood and afterward enjoys a donut. Is it staged?  You’d think Lugosi’s doctors would be giving him blood. This is such a great clip, how come it’s never shown up in a horror documentary?  And why does narrator Alan Mowbray call Lugosi a werewolf?

7.) No actual footage of Boris or Bela, but this is cute — some costumed people cavort and pose in front of a theater playing Dracula and Frankenstein. It’s from 1941, if the metadata can be trusted.

8.) Premiere of My Favorite Brunette includes a clip of Lon Chaney Jr. plugging the film in his ‘Lenny’ voice.

9.) Lon Jr. at a ceremony unveiling a bench dedicated to his father. No date given, but Junior is looking fairly young and slender. He’s with child star Edith Fellows.

10.) A brief snippet of Peter Cushing from his pre-horror days–1953, to be precise. With a mustache, I think.

11.) and another brief clip of Cushing at a theater opening, with Orson Welles.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Where do good eats and Sci-fi history meet?   Perhaps in a lot of places, but the one I discovered a while back is a Los Angeles restaurant I’ve been frequenting for almost fifty years. When I first dined at the original El Cholo on Western Avenue it was still a single house with an outdoor patio; I didn’t actually eat on the patio until after it had been remodeled into an interior space, enclosed with a skylight.

CineSavant is at its best when digging up arcane film trivia, the sub-relevant kind that inspires respected film historians to shrug their shoulders. The only research for this particular observation occurred by eating at El Cholo not long after re-seeing Roger Corman’s first production effort, 1954’s  Monster from the Ocean Floor.  Corman’s movie takes place in Mexico but was filmed in and around Los Angeles. In the first act his leading players Anne Kimball and Stuart Wade take a break from scuba diving for monsters to go ashore for a bite to eat. Corman’s restaurant scene uses only three or four camera angles. We see a row of adobe support pillars, a small courtyard and a decorative tile pattern on a wall. ( ↑ )

I’ve long been convinced that Corman filmed this scene at El Cholo. But my comparisons between the feature ( ↑ )   and El Cholo today ( ↓ )   didn’t convince at first, because the shape of the pillars seemed wrong. The lower section of each pillar, below where the arch begins, seems taller in the 1954 B&W frame grab.

But I was certain that I’d seen the tile pattern on the back wall; for the longest time it stood above a decorative fountain. I think it was there until sometime in the 1980s, when another remodel took place, widening the pillars, adding brickwork, etc..

And I figured out why those adobe pillars seem a little different. In the 1954 screen grab the arches on top are barely visible, and appear to begin at least two feet higher. Then it dawned on me that when the outdoor patio was incorporated into the building, the customers would no longer be eating at ground level, on a lawn. A foundation was constructed to raise the floor to the level of the house interior… effectively lowering the arches. The brickwork added to the arches changed their profile as well.

I can easily imagine Roger Corman wheeling and dealing like a pro on his very first movie, securing a restaurant location that might actually pass for being in Mexico. As the eating area was then essentially outdoors, it would have had natural lighting, too. I wonder if the tyro filmmaker Roger was a patron of El Cholo. The restaurant was noted as a casual hangout for movie people. In the 1975 movie Shampoo Warren Beatty’s hairdresser character says he’s in trouble with his girlfriend played by Goldie Hawn: “Jeez, I was supposed to take Jill to El Cholo.”

Perhaps the inspiration for this column item came from being locked out of restaurants for the last 1.5 years… I’m eager to go out again. Is this perhaps an old piece of Roger Corman trivia that I missed?  I’m forever ‘discovering’ things that are common knowledge. Conversely, let me know if the Monster from the Ocean Floor location has been established as some other restaurant … there are other similarities that make me think I’m right. Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

A quick book review today — really a nod, perhaps — to a book that sounded too interesting to pass up. Foxx Nolte’s Boundless Realm: Deep Explorations Inside Disney’s Haunted Mansion is for committed Disneyland fans, not necessarily casual fans like myself but for people that already know much of the development history of the parks and are ready for something more — more detail and thought. For detail, insightful conjecture, and rather good writing, the book delivers.

The focus on The Haunted Mansion(s) leads one to expect something that the book is not. In his first chapter Nolte explains that he has not written an introduction to the Disneyland and Disney World attractions, nor a history of their development or construction. Nolte instead tells us that in college he got his dream job, which allowed him to work at the Mansion in Disney World. His book is a collection of studies, observations and acquired knowledge about the attraction — how it works, how some of its design elements were developed, and in particular a great many hidden meanings within the design choices… for instance, how certain rooms were conceived for one kind of ‘illusion-attraction’ but ended up with another.

This involves telling some historical backstory (some good spook-house stories, there), culture and literature, and architectural stylings — is the Mansion Victorian, or something else? — and even relating themes from relevant movies. And there’s also a lot of ‘backstage’ employee weirdness — where on the ride the ‘ushers’ stashed their soft drink containers, and what urns in the back of which mansion room are filled with random shoes lost by riders. How they became lost, we’re not told.

I personally first saw Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion on a graduation night in 1970; I was impressed by the weird elevator room, the ghost illusions in the ballroom and Paul Frees’ spooky voice. The book really is intended for a more die-hard fan, the dedicated Disney-dog already familiar with the basics, and is ready to sign up for ‘Haunted Mansion 102.’ Every aspect of the ride is examined, including discussions of conflicts during the design process, abandoned ideas, and what seems to be a focused concentration on every single thing a rider sees and experiences during the ride.

The book is clearly not a Disney publication. Although nothing is controversial, the inner workings of Disneyland is exactly the material The Mouse routinely suppresses. This is all hard content — the illustrations included are explanatory diagrams of things like window patterns for a ‘ghost light’ effect, sketches explaining how individual gags work, and illustrations of particular pieces of interior design that Nolte is discussing.

I’m told that the publishing date for the book was April 18, although Amazon says October 1 of last year. Frankly, if I knew a genuine Disney park Nut, this would make an ideal gift.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson