Hello!

On the 4th of July, just last Saturday night, Los Angeles had a ‘no fireworks’ rule going. Private fireworks have been illegal here in the city since at least the 1970s, but on holidays they get shot off anyway. We just wait for the news to come in of injuries and fires. This year’s stricter rule banned all organized displays to discourage large gatherings during this very serious pandemic. With every trip out of the house, I imagine hearing a Looney Tunes character sneering at me: “You’ll be SORR-RY!”

But since our citizens don’t observe the good sense and civic goodwill to use masks against COVID, we knew darn well that every idiot with an illegal skyrocket and a cigarette lighter would be out, eager to burn up a palm tree or burn down an apartment building. Hey, does some kid want his fingers blown off, or his eyesight extinguished?  Come to Hollywood!

We weren’t disappointed. By nightfall the illegal fireworks reverberated through the house, from all over. In Los Angeles sound is weird as it bounces around; you can’t tell if an individual BANG is just down the block or a half-mile away. By 9pm the constant barrage continued unbroken until after I fell asleep at 1am. To us it sounded like Da Nang under bombardment by the VC.

Patrick Gomez edited two or three long aerial takes over The City of the Angels, likely from a news ‘copter staying at a prudent altitude. His memorable video recalls a popular science fiction picture: Man turns Los Angeles into Blade Runner after hypnotic aerial footage of illegal fireworks goes viral.  You will think that L.A. was under attack by Wild Bill Kelso or maybe Zahgon Bombers, trying to knock out our ionization shields. Mr. Gomez’s short video is definitely making the rounds; several friends sent it to me independently.

In the morning when I got my paper (yep, like Fred MacMurray in The Shaggy Dog), there was a mist in the air and the faintest smell of gunpowder… or did I imagine it?

And that’s the fireworks news from Dystopia of the Angels, where all scofflaws and death-wishers are Above Average.

Sad news about Ennio Morricone  yesterday… so much great music. We’re sad that we never saw him in concert… but happily he was a legend in his own time, and greatly appreciated world-wide. His music makes any movie repeat-viewable ad infinitum.

The link above to Chi Mai is my wife’s favorite Morricone cue. She pointed out to me his habit of using instruments as pure emotion. Chi Mai feels deeply emotional; in the movie it comes from it represents the pain inflicted on African colonies. The beautiful Morricone music that I think of for a funeral comes from this Leone classic.

Monday morning KPCC FM radio played Morricone music, lightly, behind their morning newscasts — which tells us how everyone feels about Il Maestro’s passing.

CineSavant and Trailers from Hell’s esteemed creative dynamo Charlie Largent asked to jump into the CineSavant column to promote a new film he’s enthused about. So we’ll finish up today with what I think is going to be a sincere ‘stream it’ pitch:

I want to thank Glenn for letting me call attention to a unique project that showed up on my radar. At a time when it’s harder than ever to make a movie, some enterprising folks show us that there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Or a rock star. – Charlie Largent

Elvis Presley was an otherworldly talent but what if he really was from another planet? A new film from Joba entertainment, LLC examines just that premise. In Elvis from Outer Space, Graceland’s favorite son is revealed to be a bona fide alien and subject to all the indignities our government would place on any suspected alien interloper. Though low budget the movie has the glossy sheen of many big budget productions and the story behind the film makes it really special. Roger Corman would be proud.

Like a few of Corman’s more infamous productions, the movie started out as one thing and ended up quite another. Elvis started life as a feature length film written and directed by Marv Z. Silverman, then was whittled down to a short film and then expanded into a bona fide feature length movie. In a sleight of hand that would make Corman proud, director Tracy Wuischpard, along with Wuischpard’s husband, musician and animator Bruce Tovsky, performed several feats of cinematic prestidigitation and voilà, a film fit for the cineplex. That the new storyline is so fluid is a testament to the filmmakers who made the new scenes blend seamlessly with the old.

As with many of Corman’s films, the making of Elvis from Outer Space is as interesting as the movie. Due to an accident Wuischpard couldn’t travel but still needed to direct the new scenes so they devised a way to do remote shoots using an iPad and FaceTime. A production assistant would carry the computer around with Wuischpard’s face along for the ride – she was able to observe the takes and coach each actor individually – in her words, “It was crazy, but it worked.”

Tovsky took on the special effects using 3-D animation to create the aliens, space ships, transporter beams, and super-power effects. One of the original actors from the short, George Thomas, was inserted into the new sequences 7 years after the original shoot and digitally de-aged.

Examining the final cut, Wuischpard declared it “My ‘Plan 9 from Outer Space’” and “… hoped there would be an audience that would enjoy the wackiness.” Elvis from Outer Space may not achieve such a hallowed cult following but it’s definitely wacky and the skills the filmmakers bring put it over the finish line.

The new show is available on Apple TV and Amazon Prime beginning today. You can hear Tracy discuss all the details here on the UFO Buster Podcast.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello! Happy July 4, you lockdown celebrants…

Trailers from Hell for July 3 features an Italian trailer for a movie that raises my curiosity — Vittorio de Sica’s Il Giudizio Universale (The Last Judgment). It’s an ‘end of days’ fable with fifty of the oddest international stars possible, as if Mike Todd had made ‘Around the End of the World in 80 Days.’ I like the way that commentator Joe Dante says that it was a flop, that nobody wanted it, that it was never exported from Italy… and admits that he likes it anyway. I’d likely enjoy it no matter how terrible it is, as I have a soft spot for all Cold War nuke parables: Ladybug Ladybug , Invasion, U.S.A. , A Short Vision.

The legendary Cesare Zavattini was the screenwriter. He must have been a sincere ban-the-bomb moralist, as the previous year he wrote the Yugoslavian movie Rat (War) aka Atomic War Bride. It’s a pre- Dr. Strangelove nuclear satire that mixes terror and slapstick. My review tries to sort it out, but the dubbed version available on DVD doesn’t work very well.

Film culture will not be deterred by a little pandemic!  With the American Cinematheque’s theaters out for the count until public film performances are once again viable, the Internet is taking up some of the slack. On August 2 at 5:PM the Cinematheque will hold a virtual event called AC Bookclub: Michael Curtiz – A Life In Film. To me it sounds like a book fair meet ‘n’ greet without a downside. Author Alan K. Rode will be talking about his career bio of the great director. The official tagline is, “Join Author Alan K. Rode Online for a Discussion About the Life and Work of Legendary Director Michael Curtiz.”

The event sounds especially friendly because it’s not limited just to people who happen to live in Los Angeles. Latvian fans of Michael Curtiz can be directly involved, through a Q&A segment that one registers for. Alan is good company in person or on video, and I assume he will be just as interesting in this ‘virtual event’ concept. According to the full details given at the AC page, the event will use Zoom, a program that has made me into a loyal fan..

Another Dick Dinman DVD Classics Corner audio show is now up, this time featuring the Warner Archive’s George Feltenstein to help Dick discuss two new WAC releases, Doris Day’s first film Romance on the High Seas ( ↑ ) and the Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney musical Strike Up the Band. It’s clear that the two of them worship Doris Day; the discussion is as much about Day and her amazing voice as it is Warners’ impressive new Technicolor restoration.

And finally, Kino Lorber has announced its releases for August. There are so many, we can’t help but wonder when are Kino is going to run out of movies to put on Blu-ray. Hopefully not before all my favorites are surface.

Available in August will be collections with Tony Curtis (The Perfect Furlough, The Great Impostor, 40 Pounds of Trouble), Carole Lombard (Fast and Loose, Man of the World, No Man of Her Own) and Audie Murphy (The Duel at Silver Creek, Ride a Crooked Trail, No Name on the Bullet).

Out as singles will be Robert Duvall in Tender Mercies, Richard Attenborough’s Cry Freedom, Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Diva, Brian Trenchard-Smith’s The Quest, Emmanuelle Beart & Phoebe Cates in Date with An Angel, Cary Grant & Carole Lombard in The Eagle and the Hawk, John Farrow’s Wake Island ( ↑ ), Budd Boetticher’s Red Ball Express, Richard Burton in Raid on Rommel, John Sturges’ Backlash, Ralph Nelson’s Soldier Blue, Joan Tewkesbury’s Old Boyfriends, Douglas Sirk’s All I Desire and There’s Always Tomorrow, Joseph Strick’s The Balcony, Clint Eastwood’s Breezy, Cecil B. DeMille’s The Sign of the Cross, Ben Affleck in Hollywoodland, and the John Ford-Harry Carey silent Hell Bent. It’s a real problem — I really want to review at least two-thirds of these.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Just two announcements today. I’m informed that the new restoration of the Abbott & Costello comedy Africa Screams is on the way; I might be able to get a review out for Saturday. ←

→ Scream Factory just gave an August 11 date for its special edition of Hammer’s The Phantom of the Opera with Herbert Lom and Heather Sears. Phantom is one of those Universal Hammers that are often transferred at a wide 2:1 aspect ratio; the best item in Scream’s spec list is the news that encodings will be offered at both 1:85 and 1:66.

And Scream has also just released the extras list for their disc of Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, due on August 18. This notice is a bit worrying, as it makes no mention of the biggest fan concern with that film, several missing bits (of surgical gore, I believe) that were left out of earlier home video presentations. You’d think the company would definitely play it up if they had the fully uncut version.

And finally, we’re told that Lionsgate will be releasing a Blu-ray of David Cronenberg’s early horror gross-out Shivers aka They Came from Within. Arrow’s earlier Blu was Region B only. Interestingly, when I reviewed Shivers in 2014 my first words were, “Is this the movie you really want to see while Ebola is running wild?”

Hopefully reviewed soon at CineSavant will be Criterion’s Come and See, Arrow’s interesting-sounding America as Seen by a Frenchman and maybe a backward step to enjoy Kino’s Lonely Are the Brave, which was released back in May.

Onward to July. We’re not halfway through a locked-down year where we learned how to look through windows, all over again. I forgot what a restaurant is like, but my little green lawn is in great shape!

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Is whole world ray gun-happy?  Edward Sullivan’s web searches show that there’s an entire underworld of antique toy collectors out there, as indicated by the fab collections of robots and space guns on this page. It makes enough sense — I might go snooping online for images of some really cool toys my aunt sent me from Germany in the late ’50s, early ’60s.

Anyway, Ed also steers us to an Alphadrome Web Board page in which a collector rejoices because he’s found an original Fethalite Space Disintegrator Gun first discussed two columns ago. The scan above is only one of about ten images the collector has taken to document it. He calls it his ‘Aussie Holy Grail’ even though it’s damaged and is missing parts. The toy looks so cheap, I’m surprised it survived at all. No, don’t thank me, this is just another essential CineSavant journalistic investigation of important social issues.

As long as I’m really overreaching for acceptable links, here’s an older Gary Teetzel link to something I know we all need, a Welded Steel AT-AT BBQ Grill. The website Nerdist brings us news we can’t live without — ‘Put another Ewok on the Barbie, Sheila!’  The little video at the page shows that it’s a fully practical item. Maybe even in the snow of the Ice Planet Hoth.

See you on Tuesday — hope to have some actual Blu-ray links and info then. Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Correspondent Keith West sheds light on last Saturday’s CineSavant post about an ad for a ray gun toy, from 1954. His note spells it out in full clarity:

“Hi Glenn, have been enjoying your reviews and comments. The ‘Space Disintegrator Gun’ you mentioned shows up in the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comedy Artists and Models as a ‘Bat Lady’ toy for kids. Comics publisher Eddie Mayehoff demonstrates the rifle, and a miniature mushroom cloud issues from the muzzle of the gun. The visual effect of the detonation appears to be real footage of an atomic test. I have attached a frame grab of Mayehoff holding the ray gun — Keith West”

Well, that’s pretty sharp ray-gun spotting on Keith’s part, if you ask me. Artists and Models is a 1955 release, so the timing is ideal. I wonder if the original toy was from Hong Kong or perhaps Japan?  I Googled ‘vintage ray gun toy images’ but didn’t find this particular model, just small-caliber plastic hand blasters, from Buck Rogers on forward.

Well, half of 2020 is almost gone, and we’re all hoping that the second half won’t be as awful as the first. It’s a slow news day, disc-wise, so I decided to round up a group of releases from the first six months of this year — the ones CineSavant was able to review — that I thought especially attractive to collectors. 2019 was a phenomenal year for fantasy, horror and sci-fi Blu-rays but the first half of 2020 is no slouch either. The box-tops below are also links to the CineSavant reviews.