Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines.

Review #2492: Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours and 11 Minutes.

Cast: 

Stuart Whitman (Orvil Newton), Sarah Miles (Patricia Rawnsley), James Fox (Richard Mays), Alberto Sordi (Count Emilio Ponticelli), Robert Morley (Lord Rawnsley), Gert Fröbe (Colonel Manfred von Holstein), Jean-Pierre Cassel (Pierre Dubois), Irina Demick (Brigitte, Ingrid, Marlene, Françoise, Yvette, Betty), Red Skelton (Neanderthal Man, Roman Birdman, Middle Ages Inventor, Victorian-era Pilot, Rocket Pack Inventor, Modern Airline Passenger), Terry-Thomas (Sir Percy Ware-Armitage), Eric Sykes (Courtney), Benny Hill (Fire Chief Perkins), Yūjirō Ishihara (Yamamoto; voice dubbed by James Villiers), Flora Robson (Mother Superior), Karl Michael Vogler (Captain Rumpelstrosse), Sam Wanamaker (George Gruber), and Tony Hancock (Harry Popperwell)

Directed by Ken Annakin.

Review:

Sure, let's talk about another vehicle-heavy movie from 1965. The impetus for making the film came from Ken Annakin's interest in aviation from a young age, as he apparently was taken up by Sir Alan Cobham in a biplane once. Born in Beverly, East Riding of Yorkshire in England, he decided to forgo being an income tax inspector (like his dad wanted) to travel around the world doing a variety of jobs, whether that was stage manager of a travelling roadshow or working as a firefighter in the outbreak of World War II. He was a member of the Royal Air Force as a flight mechanic before an injury during the Blitz saw him join their Film Unit to work as a camera operator. He worked for directors such as Carol Reed on documentaries for several years. After the war ended, he made some documentaries with Sydney Box before being assigned to his first feature with Holiday Camp (1947), which started his career off handily well. He made a variety of features on a regular basis, whether that involved stuff such as segments for the W. Somerset Maugham anthology movies Quartet (1948) and Trio (1950), a handful of movies for Disney such as The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952) or his personal favorite film, Across the Bridge (1957) or exteriors for epics such as The Longest Day (1962). As was the case with Longest Day, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines was a 20th Century Fox production. Released in June of 1965, the movie was a general success. Annakin wrote the film with Jack Davies, and they received the film's only Academy Award nomination for its screenplay (the first and only time either man was up said award). A follow-up of sorts to Flying Machines came with Monte Carlo or Bust (1969) for Paramount, which shares a few cast members from this film*. all the way to his seventies with The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking (1988) and did work on a Genghis Khan film that never got off the ground in the 1990s. He died in 2009 at the age of 94.

One thing is for sure: it is handily better than that other epic of the year that involved a big cast and intriguing visuals trying to be funny with The Great Race (right down to the ending being less of a copout). Of course, this is the kind of movie I suppose you really would like better in seeing planes go up rather than the overall humor of the movie, which is only a few notches higher than "hit or miss" for a movie set in 1910 that aims to be a farce involving the quirks of early flight for British currency (hey 10,000 of their "pounds" in 1910 is equal to about 100 times that nowadays) and actual period-accurate life-sized working aero planes. They are surely a sight to see, and the general view one gets from the film when it comes to the flying is actually quite nice to look at. It might seem bloated at around 138 minutes, which doesn't account for the intermission (that lasts around six minutes) or the introduction to the film involving the history of flying+credits (also six minutes). But its a movie with slapstick and shenanigans when studios wanted to give people something to really go to the theater to see rather than staying home for TV, so there it goes. There isn't one really great performance in the film, but there are a few handy little moments from the folks, such as a folksy Whitman (chosen because Dick Van Dyke never got the offer from his agent) providing a few chuckles as one might do in American spirit or the blustery confidence that arises from Frobe and the obvious cad nature from Terry-Thomas. Morley dominates the British stuffy spirit probably a bit more than Fox, but I think you get what they are going for. You get a sense that the drive to fly was a noble one for those who really had the drive to do so while also realizing that one has to be a bit of a nut to really go out there and fly across any sort of environment for any sort of time (I can count the amount of times I've been on a plane on exactly one hand, and none in the last 14 years)*. Of course, dwelling on the race itself isn't really the point when you've got people engaging in a duel with balloons to go with everyone getting in their stereotypes (when you've got the British involved, that almost goes without saying), complete with one scene having a plane get fixed by a bunch of nuns all in the name of making sure a Catholic wins. The title song is, well, a charmer too. As a whole, it is clear that this was a worthwhile passion project for Annakin and company to show a few interesting visuals with planes and the countryside that makes for a leisurely good time for those in the spirit of what ends up in the air. It just might fly right for you too.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

*Specifically, Terry-Thomas, Gert Fröbe and Eric Sykes returned for the movie, which in America was known as "Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies". Annakin and Davies wrote the film together. Incidentally, the theme from Flying Machines apparently was played during the funeral of Terry-Thomas in 1990.

*Even recognizing the history of flight can be full of nuts. Annakin wanted a Wright Flyer in the film and therefore got a Bristol that happened to have a common layout with the plane. The Smithsonian Institution actually had a long running dispute with the Wright brothers about putting the original Flyer (there were three Flyers) on display because they wanted to honor one of their former secretaries that had his own tests with flying in Samuel Pierpont Langely's Aerodrome before the Flyer finally was put in the Smithsonian in 1948, 45 years after the historic flight on December 17, 1903. Incidentally, that plane flew a total of four times in its lifetime, with the longest flight being over 800 feet in just under a minute. 

Catch Us If You Can.

Review #2403: Catch Us If You Can.

Cast: 

Dave Clark (Steve), Barbara Ferris (Dinah), David Lodge (Louis), Robin Bailey (Guy), Yootha Joyce (Nan), David de Keyser (Zissell), Clive Swift (Duffle), Ronald Lacey (Yeano), Hugh Walters (Grey), Michael Gwynn (Hardingford), with Lenny Davidson (Lenny), Rick Huxley (Rick), Mike Smith (Mike, and Denis Payton (Denis) Directed by John Boorman (#565 - Zardoz, #975 - Deliverance, #1210 - Excalibur, #1915 - Exorcist II: The Heretic, #2224 - Point Blank)

Review: 

The 1960s had plenty of room for rock and roll bands to get their shot, so of course here is a movie coming off the heels of the "British Invasion". The Dave Clark Five actually started as a backing musician group in 1958 before becoming their own real band in 1962 in London that had each member play varying instruments (Clark for example, played drums while also being the manager and song co-writer while the vocals were done by Mike Smith). The band had a handful of songs that made the charts, most notably with "Glad All Over", and they were the second group to go on the Ed Sullivan Show after the Beatles had done so in early 1964 (apparently, one band manager of the time argued that the early success of the Clark Five was actually a rival to the Beatles). The band disbanded in 1970, but Clark kept on with another self-titled band for a few more years. Apparently, the impetus for the movie that became known as "Catch Us If You Can" in some markets and "Having a Wild Weekend" in places such as America was because Nat Cohen had missed out on producing A Hard Day's Night. He found a producer with David Deutsch to helm the movie. The movie was written by playwright Peter Nichols, who apparently did it in need of money. The result of a script that Nichols labeled a "pretentious odyssey about middle-aged entrepreneurs exploiting young talent, crammed with irony, philosophic overtones and three-syllable words" was filmed with apparently few of his words actually filmed, probably because of having to work with actors that weren't particularly experienced. The director would be John Boorman, a clerical instructor in the British Army-turned-journalist-turned-newsroom man-turned-documentary filmmaker. Catch Us If You Can wasn't a major success, but Boorman followed it up with 1967's Point Blank (as co-written by Alexander Jacobs, who was an assistant to Deutsch on the aforementioned Catch movie) and 1968's Hell in the Pacific.

I do wish I liked the movie, but for whatever reason, my memory of the film started to diminish in what I actually liked about it the more it stuck around in my brain. Being sandwiched between band-related ventures such as A Hard Day's Night [1964] and Head [1968] (speaking of movies featuring groups with curious observations about people that are far better than Catch Us If You Can) probably does not help matters. It isn't so much that the movie isn't a subdued mess, it just so happens the movie is a puddle of ideas that only come across in vague terms that aren't helped with the lack of one commanding performance. You have Clark and Ferris going around in episodic adventures encountering varying levels of weird people (read: British) that is sometimes curious but not nearly as interesting as it believes itself to be. Ferris had a handful of roles in her career, mostly in the 1960s, and she does relatively fine in hurried timing, as one does when the camera (read: Boorman focusing on the actor) likes to focus on her worries in the prism of youth. It might be taken as being a commentary of fame and the culture of the time that mostly involves a bunch of weird people, I suppose. It just doesn't feel incisive enough to really make any interesting observations beneath the obvious that is pretty hollow (oh don't go with "but that's the point", even movies that like to talk about hollow people at least have venom) and it barely feels enthusiastic enough to make one inquire further of the Clark Five (get it, they play stuntmen in the film rather than musicians). It just comes and goes with the vibes of someone trying to make the best of muddy thoughts that is too elusive to actually hold on to. At least it looks nice and has a few "heh" gags, at least, mostly in strange timing and the ending is at least elusive enough to invite curiosity, but it just never feels like a complete experience. As a whole, it might be more of a curiosity for the road later travelled with Boorman than as some sort of great experience, which is both a blessing and curse for those who like to check out movies now celebrating sixty years.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

The Great Race.

Review #2396: The Great Race.

Cast: 

Jack Lemmon (Professor Fate and Prince Friedrich Hapnick), Tony Curtis (Leslie Gallant III, aka The Great Leslie), Natalie Wood (Maggie DuBois), Peter Falk (Maximillian Mean), Keenan Wynn (Hezekiah Sturdy), Arthur O'Connell (Henry Goodbody), Vivian Vance (Hester Goodbody), Dorothy Provine (Lily Olay), Larry Storch (Texas Jack), Ross Martin (Baron Rolf von Stuppe), Hal Smith (the Mayor of Boracho), Denver Pyle (the Sheriff of Boracho), and Marvin Kaplan (Fisbee) Directed by Blake Edwards (#329 - The Pink Panther, #481 - The Party, #899 - A Shot in the Dark, #1461 - 10)

Review: 

Every couple of years, some folks try to do a homage to the old favorites. But when you are Blake Edwards, why the hell not? The Oklahoma native grew up with a stepfather that was the son of a silent movie director (J. Gordon Edwards). Sure, he didn't become a film production manager like him, but Edwards did jobs as an actor before serving in the United States Coast Guard before becoming a director in the television-friendly 1950s. He became a director worth watching closely with films such as Operation Petticoat (1959), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Days of Wine and Roses (1962), and, well, The Pink Panther series, obviously. With The Great Race, it took a few years to get things rolling. Apparently, the idea for the film was conceived by Edwards in 1960 that took inspiration from the 1908 automobile race from New York City to Paris, France. Arthur A. Ross was brought in to develop a story to present that eventually saw him hired to do a more substantial script. While Maurice Richlin was recruited to polish the script, only Ross got credit for the screenplay to go with a story that was credited to Ross and Edwards. Amidst bad weather and overrun that meant a budget of $12 million, the movie was not exactly a considerable success at the time of release in July of 1965*, but at least Edwards kept busy (his next film came with What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? the following year), and he kept going with his slapstick interests with such films as The Party (1968).

The last few years brought folks to view people pop in for a potential chuckle with Around the World in 80 Days (1956) and It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). So, we have a pretty neat Lemmon, a worthy sidekick to accompany him in Falk, and even a decent time to spend with Wood (to a point). Hell, and then there is Curtis, our hero to try and hold along a wobbly story, fine gags, and plenty of time to consider the scope of movies, I suppose. In short, Great Race is either on par with Around the World or a bit lower. Apparently, there were quite a few names considered for the role ranging from Paul Newman to Charlton Heston. Pity. For whatever reason, Curtis and his performance is akin to someone saying the lines bit-by-bit for a silent movie. Maybe his blandness is supposed to be the point, but my God, his presence is practically eaten by everyone else in the film. The clash between him and Wood that comes up every now and then does not really gel for anything other than cheap gags (get it, get it, a woman trying to stick up for herself). Apparently, Wood only did the film so she could get to play the lead for Inside Daisy Clover (1965). At least she has the grace and chops to try and have fun with the material in all of the bumps on the road for a character that might be thought of as a chore with a lesser actor (for starters, having a character try and rid us of Keenan Wynn's character for even just a bit of time is a foolhardy mistake if we're talking about comparing timing) in a movie with really just five people to see for more than a few minutes of a 160-minute movie. Falk (a regular supporting presence in movies at the time**) is wonderful of course, tagging with Lemmon for worthwhile hijinks, particularly in his expressions and only men of stone find ways to not like Wynn and his timing. The assortment of people who show up are fine for small bits (Provine gets a song while Martin gets to look from afar). The slapstick as a whole is fine, albeit in that dragging sense where you just have to have so much little gags to even get the actual race rolling (it starts with our dastardly villain popping balloons, for example). And then the movie goes into doing an imitation of The Prisoner of Zenda. Sure. The movie wanted to have a great big pie fight akin to, well, you know. It apparently was the longest pie fight sequence in terms of staging and whatever (basically, it took five days and thousands of pies). The quibble I have is that the one person who deserves to be pie'd is Curtis, and he barely gets hit at all. Keep in mind, Lemmon gets double duty with playing two characters as an acceptable ham, but the bland hero? Barely anything, god forbid. Call me a nut for picking and choosing to obsess over plot motivations, but getting from Point A to Point B in the resolution (i.e. the race doesn't end in a true finish because I guess it shows his love or whatever and it couldn't wait until five minutes later) is a bit hokey for a movie called "great race". As a whole, Lemmon and company hold the movie together in what could've just been a crash-out into just making the finish line with the best of intentions. You'll get some chuckles, some interesting visuals and a little bit of everything that could make a worthy candidate among the long-winded epics of its time, if you dare.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

*Evidently at some point in time, the movie made $25 million. The big winner at any rate would be Treg Brown, who won an Academy Award for Best Sound Effects for this film.

**Falk was an Academy Award nominated actor by then, for Murder, Inc. (1960) and Pocketful of Miracles (1961). Of course, Columbo loomed a few years later.

Cat Ballou.

Review #2390: Cat Ballou.

Cast: 

Jane Fonda (Cat Ballou), Lee Marvin (Kid Shelleen and Tim Strawn), Michael Callan (Clay Boone), Dwayne Hickman (Jed), Nat King Cole (one of the shouters), Stubby Kaye (one of the shouters), Tom Nardini (Jackson Two-Bears), John Marley (Frankie Ballou), Reginald Denny (Sir Harry Percival), Jay C. Flippen (Sheriff Cardigan), Arthur Hunnicutt (Butch Cassidy), Bruce Cabot (Sheriff Maledon), Burt Mustin (the accuser), and Paul Gilbert (Train Messenger) Directed by Elliot Silverstein.

Review: 

This was based on a book, you know. Roy Chanslor wrote The Ballad of Cat Ballou in 1956, two years after his other work Johnny Guitar had been made into a movie. There were plans to make a movie from the get-go, with Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster being tapped to star in the film and it went by the wayside to eventually being produced by Harold Hecht for Columbia Pictures. Two writers are credited for the screenplay with Walter Newman and Frank Pierson, although Lee Marvin would take certain liberties for his main performance. Interestingly, this was the first movie directed by Elliot Silverstein. The Boston native changed his major when studying at Boston College from biology to drama and later went to Yale. He produced and directed plays at Brandeis University. He soon directed episodes for several television shows for over a decade that ranged from The Westerner to The Twilight Zone. It was he who suggested Marvin for the film after Kirk Douglas rejected the role, which probably worked better than trying to go with José Ferrer (Silverstein also came up with casting Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye as basically a "Greek chorus"). Silverstein directed five further feature movies (probably the most known is A Man Called Horse [1970]), but Silverstein kept directing for television into his late sixties before retiring to work on other ventures, which saw him teach film at USC; he died in 2023 at the age of 96.* The movie was filmed on a relatively quick basis between shooting in Colorado and later Hollywood that apparently took around six weeks. The movie (as released in late June 1965) was a fair hit and was apparently interesting enough to inspire two different television pilots (1970, 1971).

The movie was made as a breezy one to play with the familiar scenarios set out by other past Westerns, as one does for a story that involves trying to recruit a gunfighter to settle a score and the quirks that come with ballads and other such things. It might not the great phenomenon that one might expect six decades on, but there is something that is fun to see in the familiar aspects of looking at a frontier and having the funny bone at least be tickled with the energy of an old shoe. It doesn't wear out its welcome at 96 minutes in resourceful little charms that come out, whether that involves the parts with Cole & Kaye jumping in or a horse having its legs crossed. A good deal of the lingering "hang-ups" one could have with the movie could also be answered with "and yet...". Movie isn't consistent in its joke? And yet it was still fun. Marvin's performance isn't really much a double-act? And yet he still is fun in it for those who adore his everyman qualities. Hell of a time to find out I never had watched a movie with Jane Fonda in it. The daughter of Henry Fonda, she had an interest in the arts at a young age and made her film debut with Tall Story (as directed by her godfather Joshua Logan in 1960); apparently, she got offered the role because the manager for Ann-Margret rejected the offer for her. Evidently, she and Marvin apparently didn't think Cat Ballou was going to turn out particularly good, and yet, here we are. She may be playing the straight one in comparison to a couple of loons and killers around her, but she still does pretty well with what she has to work with, growing into the type of mold that one really would sing ballads about. Go figure that it was this particular movie, this particular Western, that saw Lee Marvin win an Academy Award (on his only nomination, no less).** He could be the villain in stuff like The Big Heat (1953), or a cop with M Squad, or have top billing with The Killers (1964), but this was the movie that apparently made him more of a star. Alcohol or no alcohol, he clearly is having a ball with the character of Shelleen, unwieldly and brimming in the same way one might talk about an old peacock that is delightful to watch. There isn't too much to really say about Lee's portrayal of Strawn besides the casual "heavy" factor that is played from time to time (complete with tin nose), but the movie isn't really about detailed heavies anyway, so it's fine by me. The support around Fonda and Marvin are fine, with Cole (in his last film appearance, as he died in February 1965) and Kaye make for a delightful chorus, carrying the film a bit in observations. The movie is here and there when it comes to things that aren't familiar for viewers of the Western, but ultimately, Cat Ballou is a treat for those who buy into what it is selling, one that has fun with its characters and surroundings for a delightful time.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

*Incidentally, Silverstein was a key figure for the Directors Guild of America in a number of respects, such as making a push for the Director's Cut and also getting a proper workspace for directors such as he.

**Marvin beat the following actors for the award: Richard Burton (The Spy Who Came In from the Cold), Laurence Olivier (Othello), Rod Steiger (The Pawnbroker), and Oskar Werner (Ship of Fools). The movie also had four Academy Award nominations: Newman and Pierson for their screenplay, Charles Nelson for Editing, Frank De Vol for Original Score, and Jerry Livingston & Mack David for Best Song in "The Ballad of Cat Ballou". Also: I wait for the chance to encounter that other Western offbeat movie with Marvin in Paint Your Wagon (1969).

The Family Jewels.

Review #2366: The Family Jewels.

Cast: 

Jerry Lewis (Willard Woodward / James Peyton / Everett Peyton / Julius Peyton / Capt. Eddie Peyton / Skylock Peyton / Bugsy Peyton), Donna Butterworth (Donna Peyton), Sebastian Cabot (Dr. Matson), Neil Hamilton (Attorney), Jay Adler (Mr. Lyman, Attorney), Anne Baxter (Actress in In-Flight Movie), Ellen Corby (Senior Citizen Airline Passenger), and Gene Baylos (Circus Clown) Directed by Jerry Lewis (#963 - The Nutty Professor [1963], #1404 - The Bellboy, #1710 - The Patsy)

Review: 

It's interesting, I had this movie on a DVD pack for several years and I can't exactly say that there were interesting reasons to get around to this movie. The Family Jewels was the sixth feature film directed by Jerry Lewis (of twelve in his career, with all but one having him as the star), which happens to be a bit of a swan song. It was the fifth (of seven) time he co-wrote the screenplay with Bill Richmond. It was the last one he directed for Paramount Pictures, as he would leave for Columbia Pictures the following year. In what might be a bit familiar for those who see enough comedies, you have our lead playing multiple characters (as evidenced by previous efforts such as The Nutty Professor and The Ladies Man), as one does when having a movie about a kid having to visit uncles and "choose" which one to live with (the uncles I suppose have no recourse to have a say), and it can't simply just be the family chaffeur. Opposite Lewis is Donna Butterworth, who starred in exactly one other film with Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966). The movie made some money and probably didn't attract as much praise or criticism as one might read from the early (or late) parts of Lewis as a director, suffice to say*.

If you're big with Lewis movies, you might or might not find a bit of enjoyment even with a second-rate effort that is found here with a movie (runtime: 99 minutes) that is hit-or-miss with its gags because of the fact that it really is just a series of vignettes with little to really show besides Lewis in a costume and Butterworth making small observations. It basically could be construed as a coin-flip of what you might like from characters that are so, so, so clear to pick out from: a sea captain with a, um, interesting facial getup and a "story", a circus clown that actually sounds like Lewis not just doing a bit (which of course isn't there long), a photographer character that looks and sounds like Buddy Kelp (get it, because now he just take photos rather than being a professor?), a bumbling pilot in a plane (Ford Trimotor) more rare than the successful gags in the sequence, a detective character that gets, well, "Sherlocky" on a pool game, and a gangster character with goofy teeth. It really is hard to say in so many words the level of varying middle-ground stuff that comes from a movie that clearly has so many characters to try and hide the fact that this probably would barely hold mustard as a TV special. It is the kind of movie where you might start lifting your hand up in the "move on already" motion, because there can only be so many chances at sight gags (so basically, swing, whiff, swing, whiff, whiff, swing, whiff). Sometimes I was wondering if the movie would've somehow been funnier if it focused on either the Sherlock character or the decidedly non-happy clown entirely, because at least those would've invited the possibility of actually having more of someone like Hamilton (pictured one year before being Commissioner Gordon on the famed Batman show) or Adler for more than five minutes**. Butterworth is fine, but she doesn't exactly have much to do besides what you might call "plucky kid stuff", because this is a movie that loves its cheap gags to observe Lewis with, such as say, in-flight entertainment being affected by the turbulence of the plane or a military parade being shifted around or a car station having hijinks. To say nothing of the sheer predictable ending. Honestly, the more I think about the movie, the less I find myself liking it, really, because it stuck less and less in my mind when trying to make this review, and I generally think that if I don't feel like watching it again, it doesn't qualify enough to be thought of as a "good" movie. With that in mind, your milage will vary with a later-stage Lewis movie that just wasn't for me because sometimes, "hit-or-miss" just isn't enough.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

*Maybe this is petty, but in the opening, Lewis is seen with a Dodgers cap on a Giants jersey. Jeez, man.

**If someone actually times how long Hamilton or Adler are in this movie, you get a gold star.

Color Me Blood Red.

Review #2278: Color Me Blood Red.

Cast: 

Gordon Oas-Heim (Adam Sorg), Candi Conder (April Carter), Iris Marshall (Mrs. Carter), Elyn Warner (Gigi), Scott H. Hall (Mr. Farnsworth), William Harris (Gregorovich), Jerome Eden (Rolf), Pat Finn-Lee (Sydney), and Jim Jaekel (Jack) Written and Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis (#752 - Blood Feast, #756 - Monster A-Go-Go, #2122 - Two Thousand Maniacs!)

Review: 

 “Oh, just wild imagination. We had no artistic master, maybe the Grand Guignol in Paris. The notion was simply something that we felt might outrage without being obscene. That’s a very narrow line to walk. Even today, try to think of something that will outrage without being obscene. It’s difficult. So, gore was the natural solution to that.”

If you remember correctly, Herschell Gordon Lewis had directed his first two horror films with Blood Feast (1963) and Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964) with plenty of splatter to go around. With this film, it represented a change in seasons. Up until this point, he had made films in collaboration with producer David F. Friedman for his first twelve films as a filmmaker. However, it would be their last together due to issues involving their business partnership (apparently, at some point in time they were in a deal with Sid Reich and Stan Kohlberg that resulted in acrimony involving money). Some have apparently labeled the aforementioned Feast and Maniacs as part of a trilogy when it comes to blood and gore and the Friedman-Lewis partnership, and it should be noted that inklings of doing another film of "super blood and gore" were scrapped on the grounds that it might oversaturate the market. Friedman would continue to produce with exploitation films (most notably Ilsa: She wolf of the SS [1975]) for many years; he died in 2011 at the age of 87. Lewis kept going in his own brand of aiming for whatever market he felt like doing, which could involve taking time to "finish" incomplete crap like Monster a Go-Go (1965), children's movies like Jimmy, the Boy Wonder (1966) and a handful of further horror films with A Taste of Blood (1967), Something Weird (1967), The Gruesome Twosome (1967), The Wizard of Gore (1970), and The Gore Gore Girls (1972) before his first retirement. 

Really, just watch A Bucket of Blood (1959) when it comes to artist-infused murder. I did not have high hopes for this film, but even watching this ended up with very middling results. You get the same type of characteristics in watching a movie that looks and feels like something that came out of Florida in cheap and allegedly grimy aims that you did with Lewis and his last two movies. The body-count isn't nearly as considerable as one might expect (three, and only two blood paintings get 'done"), and it just isn't as amusing to watch even when one has that sinking feeling of being in a mediocre movie for 79 minutes. Oas-Heim apparently wasn't the most tolerable of actors to work with Lewis, who apparently was in just this and Moonshine Mountain. His attempt at the tortured artist is somehow the highlight when it comes to acting, probably because God only knows how one of us (you, the reader, or heaven help us, me) would do in acting. You might wonder how this ranks lower than his Maniacs film, a feature that had a song about the South rising again. Well, that movie actually had a strange chaotic element that felt in touch with actually making one interested in just what the hell was going to happen next in basically "hicksploitation". You don't really get that here, since even asking why one can't get the proper red for a canvas seems like trying to insult a baby for not shutting up. Hell, the movie sets up an art critic who sets the score of just what our lead character is in terms of bad art and decides, yes, maybe he really is just an artistic imposter that might as well go for selling out. The actual death scenes aren't even that good either, with one scene being on a paddle-boat because if you're going to shill something, shill the idea that folks will get killed with boats. You have to remember that Lewis was the kind of filmmaker that aimed to make do with his budget (so no rehearsals and shoot as much as possible), complete with seeing filmmaking as a business, not art. As such, what you get is a mishmash of stuff that could either have fit right in with home movies (just take a look at those fresh beach shots) or, well, stuff made fast. It doesn't even feel worth calling a piece of crap, really, because the movie is basically the equivalent of someone going up to you to show a dead animal. What does one even say to such a weird thing? Calling him a poor man's Roger Corman might as well be the case. As a whole, if you really like to see a middle of the road "blood movie" that happens to approach its 60th anniversary soon and you just need to scratch that itch, well, don't say I didn't warn you.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

The Ipcress File.

Review #2256: The Ipcress File.

Cast: 

Michael Caine (Harry Palmer), Guy Doleman (Colonel Ross), Nigel Green (Major Dalby), Sue Lloyd (Jean Courtney), Gordon Jackson (Jock Carswell), Aubrey Richards (Dr. Radcliffe), Frank Gatliff (Eric Grantby), Thomas Baptiste (Barney), Oliver MacGreevy (Housemartin), Freda Bamford (Alice), and Pauline Winter (Charlady) Directed by Sidney J. Furie (#787 - Superman IV: The Quest for Peace)

Review: 

"If you have a great story and you try to do all these different camera angles, you'll get away with it. But if you don't have a great story, they'll hit you hard. If you try to use the screen the way a painter uses a canvas, somehow it's not considered acceptable. The reason I did it for the first time on THE IPCRESS FILE was because we had a script and we hated it. What we did was we shot from the beginning and we rewrote as we went."

When it comes to spy features, it makes sense to eventually encounter this film. It is an adaptation roughly based on The IPCRESS File, a 1962 novel written by Len Deighton, who had been inspired by a neighbor he once had named Anna Wolkoff, a daughter of a czarist admiral and also a spy that ended up being arrested, which Deighton (a young boy living in central London when World War II started) witnessed. Interestingly enough, the ensuing film would be produced by Harry Saltzman, who had went from producing stuff such as Look Back in Anger (1958) to being a partner in producing the first couple of James Bond films (incidentally, Deighton was initially hired to write From Russia with Love [1963] and had even travelled with the crew but was eventually replaced). The director was the Canadian Sidney J. Furie, who had started his career in his native Canada in 1957 (turning a planned CBC project into his debut feature with A Dangerous Age) before moving to England and gradually rising up the ranks of small-scale stuff in horror, drama and musicals (most notably with Cliff Richard). Apparently, Harry Saltzman did not like Furie in production and even once claimed editor Peter R. Hunt (also a Bond alumni) was mostly involved in direction (he wasn't big on certain angles utilized in certain shots, but Hunt backed Furie). The film screenplay was credited to Bill Canaway to James Doran, although apparently Lionel Davidson, Johanna Harwood, Lukas Heller and Ken Hughes delivered uncredited work; according to Caine, Furie took a copy of the script on the first day he was on set and set it on fire, which meant that the film was basically being re-written as they shot it. Deighton wrote five further novels involving Harry Palmer (he wasn't named in the books, but, well, go with it) until 1974; two of those books were turned into films (Funeral in Berlin [1966] was directed by Guy Hamilton while Billion Dollar Brain [1967] was directed by Ken Russell) to go with two "TV films" that all had Caine as the lead. In 2022, The Ipcress File was adapted again as a six-episode TV miniseries.

There are a handful of people familiar with the James Bond films here, such as production designer Ken Adam, editor Peter R. Hunt and composer John Barry, but it doesn't mean one is watching a pastiche. Instead, one has a neat and compact feature that has a wonderfully dry Caine. The results matter most in a grounded and cynical feature that clearly reflects well upon its era with a craftsman and a worthy cast and crew to make entertainment in the art of the mundane for elite paranoia. There is a smoothness to the production that you can feel through its 109-minute runtime that has style even in the mask of realism. Even for his second big role in a film, one just sees Caine and understands just how he could be a star just like that, because his habits are ones that we quickly grow to know and love that goes from disregard for authority to appreciating the fine art of cooking. His wit is drier than say, a certain quippy film icon of the time, but it oozes a certain type of charm within the perception that just never fails. Doleman and Green provide worthwhile contrast to Caine in the general stiff-lipped sense of bureaucracy and stone-wall nature that is more unnerving than it seems (of course Doleman would end up being the only recurring actor besides Caine in the trilogy of feature films). Lloyd is soothing in that elusive tête-à-tête between her and Caine. When you think about it, it really isn't so much about the plot (although Gatliff is pretty unnerving when it comes to the brainwashing stuff) as it is about the vibes that arise from a camera that has you view the action as if you were the one staking out the characters. The atmosphere (complete with seemingly underrated John Barry doing the music) is one that is hard to match in carefully composed fun. The patience taken to watch it play all the way through leads to plenty of reward for the viewer that seeks it out.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.

Help!

Review #1939: Help!

Cast: 

The Beatles [John Lennon • Paul McCartney • George Harrison • Ringo Starr], with Eleanor Bron (Ahme), Leo McKern (Clang), John Bluthal (Bhuta), Patrick Cargill (the Superintendent), Victor Spinetti (Professor Foot), Roy Kinnear (Algernon), Alfie Bass (Doorman), Warren Mitchell (Abdul), and Peter Copley (Jeweller) Directed by Richard Lester (#541 - A Hard Day's Night, #594 - A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, #785 - Superman II, #786 - Superman III, #972 - The Three Musketeers, and #976 - The Four Musketeers)

Review: 

I'm sure you remember A Hard's Day Night (1964), the first feature film that starred the wildly popular group of The Beatles. It was the third feature effort from Richard Lester, the American-born director who had lived in England since the 1950s. In my review for that film, I forgot to mention that one of the main attractions of Lester for the Beatles was his work on a short film called The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (1959), although his experience in directing musical acts with It's Trad, Dad! (1962) probably also helped. The movie was a hit before it even came out (owing to pre-sales), but there was always a plan to do more than one Beatles film. At any rate, Lester followed the aforementioned Beatles film with The Knack ...and How to Get It (1965), a wide hit itself. Since the sequel wasn't going to feature the group doing what they were doing in their life, naturally the film would be about them being "passive responders to some external stimulus". Help! (working title: Eight Arms to Hold You) was a bigger budget film with more time (which meant filming in The Bahamas and Austria) and in color, which resulted in a generally pleasant experience, aside from the fact that the group got into marijuana during filming that made for plenty of giggles. The film was written by Marc Behm and Charles Wood. It should be noted that the film was apparently inspired by Duck Soup (1933), while the comedy stylings of the group was inspired by The Goon Show, which Lester had experience with. The next project with the Beatles was with the TV musical film Magical Mystery Tour in 1967, while Yellow Submarine (1968) saw them appear for exactly one scene, and the documentary Let It Be (1970) was their swansong. Lester would continue to do a variety of features in the next couple of years, whether that meant comedy in How I Won the War (1967, which had Lennon in a supporting role) or The Bed Sitting Room (1969) or other efforts such as the wildly successful Musketeers films.

At the time, the group did not particularly like the experience of filming - John Lennon felt like the group was like extras in their own film before calling it "advanced" years later. Of course, having to do a film alongside doing songs for it and touring probably didn't help matters. The two Beatles films were inspirations for filmmakers too: Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider saw the success of the two films and decided to revive an idea the former had for television involving teenagers and rock.... which eventually became The Monkees, which had their own feature film (but that is another time...). If you came to watch a film about The Beatles do a bit of singing and have a bit of fun with each other, you came to the right place. There's a handful of songs to view here, such as the title song (duh) or "Ticket to Ride". The group of four may be easy to describe with a sentence or two as performers rather than outright actors, but one always smiles when they are on screen, mostly in the case of the hapless Starr or the charm in McCartney (evidently, Lester felt Harrison was the best actor of the group, so take that for what it's worth). Besides, they seem to be having fun with the whole affair, whether that involves trying to deal with a stubborn ring on the finger or whatever - the lines go off one another like paper in the wind. It might not be as effective in general energy as their previous effort, but it has enough casual flair for adventure to make it a useful follow-up. It has been termed as being at the forefront for the "music video" (no, it didn't create the trend, but it sure had a key place with the filmmaking techniques used for sequences such as the title song). All of the fun happens around a movie about Eastern cultists and mad scientists chasing the group for a ring one of them has on their finger - McKern, Spinetti, and Kinnear make suitable foils to see involve themselves in the silly chase. Things come and go with the film, which all ends with tomfoolery on the beach. For 92 minutes, you can't really go wrong with this light fare of music and comedy with one of the most noted quartets of their time at your side for a playful goofy time.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Curse of the Fly.

Review #1910: Curse of the Fly.

Cast: 

Brian Donlevy (Henri Delambre), George Baker (Martin Delambre), Carole Gray (Patricia Stanley), Burt Kwouk (Tai), Yvette Rees (Wan), Michael Graham (Albert Delambre), Mary Manson (Judith Delambre), Charles Carson (Inspector Charas), Jeremy Wilkin (Inspector Ronet), and Rachel Kempson (Madame Fournier) Directed by Don Sharp.

Review: 

Return of the Fly (1959) was not exactly a good movie to follow The Fly (1958), but you can at least understand where one would have fun in making a quick buck when success had just struck before. Robert L. Lippert loved making movies on the B-level, making over 200 movies. Of course, by 1966, now he was making movies in England that had distribution by 20th Century Fox, because making movies in Hollywood was not as cheap (plus with the Eady Levy, there was a tax on box office receipts in England for nearly two decades). This was the phase in his career that saw films such as Witchcraft (1964) and The Earth Dies Screaming (1964), for example. His career ended with The Last Shot You Hear (1969) when he and Fox mutually parted ways. At any rate, Lippert figured he could churn out one more of these films with the rights he had, so he tasked Harry Spalding, the writer behind plenty of Lippert productions, to go along with the idea. Don Sharp was recruited to direct, and he stated that the opening pages at the asylum were pretty good although he said the overall script "wasn't good enough". It did not help that he and Spalding were not particularly happy that Donlevy was cast as the lead, because Spalding actually envisioned Claude Rains (by that point 75 years old, as opposed to Donlevy, who was 64) in the role. In fact, it seemed to help Sharp lose confidence in what he made, since the only reason he did the film was to get back in the directing chair after spending months doing second-unit work on Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965); Sharp had moved from acting to directing by the mid-1950s and would direct for three decades.

The film never received a proper video release on VHS or LaserDisc, being rarely seen for many years until the 21st century, and it didn't help that the movie was little seen on release in 1965. Calling it the movie where a fly isn't present is probably the easiest way to describe it, but there are a few decent points made when not mired in complete mediocrity. Both Fly sequels aren't good, but they make useful curiosity pieces as the depths one can go in trying to draw blood from a stone. This film is technically a sequel, in that it retains the family name seen in the last two films (Delambre) and even shows a still from the second film that tries to connect the dots, although the Delambre here is...the son of the guy who got turned back into a human in the second one, I think (well, maybe the elder Delambre is the one played by Donlevy, but the second film had him named Philippe, so...). Hell, put it like this: a guy got turned into a fly, went nutty, then got turned back into a human, but his offspring have after-effects...a curse, you might say. Yep, that is what the title refers to, as the family is cursed to keep trying to do teleportation (oh, and they had tested on others, with...less than savory results); they basically act like mad scientists, but with a bit less competency (one guy teleports across the continent but can't go anywhere because he has no passport and gets sick to go along with that - the climax of his fate is just as amusing). With an 86-minute run-time, the result is a movie that doesn't particularly get more interesting than the opening scene with a woman breaking out of an asylum and casually lying her way in hitch-hiking (yes, the escape is presented in slow-motion). The rest manages to be a stiffly executed feature that moves in exactly one way that seems inevitable in plodding nature that means one is trapped with a movie that never reaches greatness or awfulness. It is too modest to go anywhere beyond mildness, as if the idea of a family trying to reach for "the greater good" is just a bit too quiet. 

Well, casting the man behind a number of tough guy roles and The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) seemed like an interesting plan. Donlevy isn't terrible in the film, but I think you can see where the filmmakers seemed like they didn't have the guy they wanted, since he seems a bit too quiet to really make the role seem anything more than a pale one, and I imagine even an elderly Rains would lend some gravity to the situation. You should feel the ooze of a man who sees experiments go really wrong (including on himself) and decides to go full speed anyway. This goes for Baker as well, who has to deal with the fact that he has a middling chemistry with Gray that tries to play the angles of both having secrets on the other and her possibly going nuts (ooh, the asylum escapee thinks she is going nuts, wonder how that will work out). Seeing the reaction to the first wife being used to test the experiment (and the horrifying result probably sounds a tad more interesting, but I digress. It just seems all too plain, never really seeming to gain much steam besides a few cheap effects, such as a writhing mass concocted by teleporting two people in the same chamber, or the moments where the younger Delambre starts to show his age. The feeling of inevitability overwhelms the movie in a way that just makes things out to feel like obligation rather than general interest. There are ideas here that could make for a fun time, but it just can't go beyond first gear to really get anywhere. It is a watchable sequel, and in some ways, it may prove a bit better than Return of the Fly but neither movie hold a candle to The Fly (original or remake). If you want to see just where the road leads in sequels for horror movies and like to see obscure movies not be held out, I suppose here is your chance.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

Motorpsycho.

Review #1872: Motorpsycho.

Cast: 

Haji (Ruby Bonner), Alex Rocco (Cory Maddox), Stephen Oliver (Brahmin), Holle K. Winters (Gail Maddox), Joseph Cellini (Dante), Thomas Scott (Slick), Coleman Francis (Harry Bonner), and Sharon Lee (Jessica Fannin) Directed by Russ Meyer (#1420 - Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!)

Review: 

If you remember, Russ Meyer first made movies when he was with the US Army's 166th Signal Photographic Company during World War II. His first couple of films would be "nudie cuties", which thrived on the circuit of independent and exploitation audiences, which he wrote, directed, edited, photographed, and distributed himself. He did this for a couple of years before shifting to less nude fare with Lorna in 1964 (incidentally, that movie was about a woman being assaulted that sees her break out of sexual frustration with her husband - Meyer described himself as looking at sex in a humorous and outrageous way). Mudhoney (1965) was a Great Depression period drama without as much exploitation (and not quite successful with audiences). But August 1965 saw the release of both Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and this film, with the former being the one that eventually became a cult classic. Each have their fair share of violence and sex (i.e. women you or someone would probably say is attractive) with villainous trios, with one featuring a gang of go-go dancers and the other featuring a gang of bikers. Meyer served as co-writer on this film, as James Griffith, Hal Hopper, and W. E. Sprague did the script with him. Meyer also served as producer along with his wife Eve, served as cinematographer, and he edited the film with Charles G. Schelling.

There are a handful of odd moments but seeing a blurb promoting the use of Toyota vehicles at the end certainly was a surprise. Seeing a movie with a character depicted as being a veteran of the Vietnam War in 1965 was another surprise in a movie filled with lurid energy. It may not spring as many eye-raising moments as the aforementioned Pussycat movie (which he also wrote/produced/edited), but it never loses sight of what it means to see raw human energy put on screen to the point where could almost call it a satire of exploitation. Who else would make a movie where a guy gets stung by a snake and yells at his lady accomplice to suck the poison out? Meyer has an efficient eye to making movies with the right degree of sleaze that means one gets to see a bunch of grim violence to go with the early moments of attractions (as one says). Sure, there are probably people who will say that it is the women that really attracts people to his films, but who cares? I would rather have a director who has a clear interest in what they want to show on screen rather than a pretentious bore, and Meyer knows how to edit his material into 74 minutes of entertainment with bombast. As was the case with Pussycat, it is the women (in this case, one) that sticks out among the cast, as Haji (playing a Cajun whose trip with a scuzzy husband turns into death) makes for quite a tremendous presence, one who vexes the screen with dazzling energy. Rocco is fine in the general hero of vengeance type designed to fill time in one-note moments that doesn’t waste all of one’s time. The biker gang (three of them, which is the minimum to even have a gang) do okay, with Oliver becoming more interesting when the deranged elements come through (i.e. going from hip lingo to fantasizing about being back in the jungle), with the radio-in-ear Scott being a close second. Older film lovers may notice Coleman Francis in a scuzzy role, which is amusing to consider when this might be the best film he ever appeared in where he is on screen (for longer than a couple of seconds) or behind the camera. As a whole, one would best consider this a decent companion piece to Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, both having their own methods of going through the road of sleaze and violence that can be the difference between one being a cult classic and the other just being a decent little flick to find in the margins for those who like what they saw from the mind (and eyes) of Russ Meyer.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Invasion of Astro-Monster.

Review #1623: Invasion of Astro-Monster.

Cast: 
Akira Takarada (Kazuo Fuji), Nick Adams (Glenn), Kumi Mizuno (Namikawa), Jun Tazaki (Dr. Sakurai), Akira Kubo (Tetsuo Torii), Keiko Sawai (Haruno Fuji), Yoshio Tsuchiya (Controller of Planet X), Takamaru Sasaki (Chairman of Earth Committee), Gen Shimizu (Minister of Defense), Yoshifumi Tajima (General), with Haruo Nakajima (Godzilla), Masaki Shinohara (Rodan), and Shoichi Hirose (King Ghidorah) Directed by Ishirō Honda (#167 - Godzilla [1954/1956], #711 - Mothra, #1092 - Gorath, #1224 - King Kong vs. Godzilla, #1225 - Mothra vs. Godzilla, and #1226 - Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster)

Review: 

The sixth film in the Godzilla franchise continued the progression of the series into keeping with the times and desires from audiences and promoters in more ways than one. The film started as a co-production between Toho and America, a most unusual venture. Henry Saperstein had acquired United Productions of America (known for its animation shorts such as Mister Magoo, which reportedly was the reason Saperstein bought it, as he specialized in tie-in merchandise) and marketers eventually wanted monster movies for distribution in America. After doing research about who was proficient in doing such films and doing training in Japanese, he talked to Toho about doing a venture together, and he provided a significant portion of funding and input. For one thing, the budget would be a bit smaller, with a variety of footage re-used from earlier films to make up for less elaborate models, while the script would take different cues from the usual conference meeting type of movie like the previous ones, where it takes place later in the film after one has already seen a new face to the film: aliens. When it came for distribution in America, there would not be as many edits this time around (i.e. no Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956) kind of staging), with a few edits and dubbing from Marvin Miller (alongside Nick Adams retaining his voice) being the key points by Glen Glenn Sound. This version (called  Monster Zero) wasn't released until 1970. The advent of home media has evolved since VHS and dubs, since one can find it on DVD and Blu-Ray in its original version (Criterion Collection even did an entire box set of the first fifteen films just two years ago, for the collectors that are curious).

Oh, so what is the plot about? Aliens are in trouble on the hidden planet by Jupiter, so a Japanese-American space ship (which flies both flags alongside one from the United Nations) that lands there is approached to bring them Godzilla and Rodan to fight the not quite mole people in exchange for the cure for cancer (the edit changed it to all known diseases, as if to make it even more suspicious). The film continues the monster mash-up from before in returning Godzilla with Rodan and King Ghidorah, albeit in the year 196X, and this was the fourth straight film written by Shinichi Sekizawa. The core is composed of seven actors, with Takarada and Adams playing the opening, Mizuno playing the alien love interest, Tazaki playing the main conference room focus, Kubo and Sawai playing the would-be couple, and Tsuchiya playing the main alien. The cast generally does well in this regard, since Takarada has to just make sure he keeps a collected presence without seeming wooden. When it comes to Adams, it is interesting to note his career trajectory through a career plagued by highs and lows (after struggling to self-promote himself) and a life cut short at the age of 36. He is most known for his starring role in The Rebel (1959-1961), and he starred for Toho with Frankenstein Conquers the World (1965), which also featured Mizuno, Tsuchiya, Tajima, and Sawai while Honda directed. He seems to be having a good time with this role, one that leaves him some room to roll with the others and not be constrained by being dubbed (unless one sees the edit) too much, and while the parts with Mizuno may be easy to see coming, they go off without a hitch. Tazaki plays the exposition decently enough, while Kubo does alright with light relief next to Sawai. Tsuchiya made the hand gestures for his character on improvisation while combining a few languages for the alien dialect at Honda's request, and while he is playing the role with a black visor around his eyes (amid a whole bunch of stuff that means only his face isn't all covered in black or grey garments), he does well with keeping a balance of deceptive benevolence and cold menace for what is needed enough to make a worthy adversary in a franchise that a greedy entrepreneur and an assassin for adversaries in previous sequels (besides the obvious big-headed monster). 

Of course not everything is toned to serious space opera stuff. It was Tsuchiya that suggested the "Godzilla dance", doing so to a supportive effects man in Eiji Tsuburaya, which won out over the objections of Honda. This dance was inspired by a dance done in a manga called Oso Matsu-kun (although at least Godzilla doesn't shot "Shie!" like the manga). This happened to be the last time that Tsuburaya served as the director of special effects (he would serve as the supervisor with his own company for Ebirah, Horror of the Deep the following year while Sadamasa Arikawa directed the effects, however). For me, the dance is fine, because we are talking about a quasi-space opera with aliens that harmed by soundwaves and other strange things, which is a far cry from the original but still just as interesting. Honda lamented the film in later years, calling the production a "vicious cycle of time and budget", since the recycled scenes could only fool audiences for a while before they would eventually notice. At least the effects look well enough to keep me interested, and the film runs efficiently at 94 minutes to not drag before settling on Godzilla. Honestly, I thought the movie worked fine in keeping consistency, where it keeps the exposition concise enough to not seem slogged down in repetition, and the space sequences seem refreshing without looking ridiculous (this is 1965, after all). When comparing the film to the previous three films released in the 1960s, I would say that this one ranks right up with Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964) in keeping the entertainment value consistent with a refreshing story to make a worthwhile successor to the series without leaving any seams of doubt to start tearing up. Regardless of the troubles that Honda had with the film, it serves as a good effort from a director proficient in balancing effects with fair drama into well entertainment for audiences across the globe.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Gamera, the Giant Monster.

Review #1606: Gamera, the Giant Monster.

Cast: 

Eiji Funakoshi (Dr. Hidaka), Michiko Sugata (Nobuyo Sakurai), Harumi Kiritachi (Kyoko Yamamoto), Junichiro Yamashita (Aoyagi), Yoshiro Uchida (Toshio Sakurai), Yoshiro Kitahara (Mr. Sakurai), Jun Hamamura (Dr. Murase), Yoshio Yoshida (Eskimo Chief), and George Hirose (the Japanese ambassador) Directed by Noriaki Yuasa.

Review: 

"This may be cliché, but the only thing I have to say is, “Gamera is immortal.” Gamera is not dead. If we want to bring him back and create a new story, we can. He’s immortal. [Shigeo] Nagashima said, “The [Yomiuri] Giants are immortal.” But I want to say, “Gamera is immortal.” Gamera is really forever. That’s all I have to say. I’m grateful for being inspired to create such a great character.

Oh sure, there have been plenty of kaiju films for Japanese viewers to watch, but how about one parallel from Godzilla for one? Gamera (derived from the Japanese word kame that means turtle) is an on-and-off again franchise that has inspired twelve feature films, with two distinct periods to them that all started 55 years ago with the original production, as made by Daiei Film, which you might recognize from Warning from Space (1956) and subsequent kaiju works like Daimajin (1966, which involves a giant stone). There were eight films in the original line of Gamera (1965-1971, 1980), with Noriaki Yuasa directing seven of them. The son of a stage actor, he had made his debut in film with Shiawase nara te o tatakō (1964), and it is one of only two films he directed that didn't involve Gamera. It is also the only film of the franchise to be in black-and-white and to not have a second monster involved in the action. One might go with the easy generalization of this being a ripoff of Godzilla, and the basic framework of that seems to ring true. After all, Dalei wanted to make a kaiju (monster) movie, inspired by The Birds (1963) and the Godzilla films...so they first turned to giant rats. No, seriously, actual rats were going to be used in ravaging the world (since stop motion and other methods didn't work out); if you can believe it, this did not last long, since the wild rats they brought in resulted in health infections. Studio head Macaichi Nagata came up with another idea while on an airplane, where he saw something shaped like a turtle swimming that suddenly dropped out of sight. But wait a minute, it gets better, since we are talking about a turtle with tusks that also happens to fly like an UFO. In that sense, maybe it explains the strange ways the film sets up its own monster, because it begins in the Artic (which they refer to as a continent, for some reason) with Eskimos as military planes (which happen to be carrying nuclear weapons) happen to fly by. After a brief skirmish that is harmless enough to never stoke front page headlines but still enough to create Gamera, one finds themselves watching the other shoe drop: an ancient stone that displays Gamera and some mysterious markings (which they think is waves...joke's on them!). There has been arguments made about similarities to mythology from other sources with the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations that had a guardian with the Black Tortoise, known in Japan as Genbu (of course this film floats around the idea of this being deriving in some way from Atlantis), although writer Niisan Takahashi stated that it was simply just a "100% original" script done at the wishes of Nagata and producer Yonejiro Saito (who told him about the turtle story). Takahashi would write for all eight films.

Maybe a turtle can be a really imposing monster if one gets the focus just right. This...in an odd way to go by it, since sometimes the creature will look fine for destroying models, and then other times one nearly cracks up at the execution of a flying turtle with big teeth and eyes. There had been plenty of monster movies with dinosaurs or beasts looking like them for decades, so why not another strange monster? Godzilla was still going strong at the time this film was released, with Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965) being released just a month after this film (that film, a Japanese-American production to be covered at a certain time, involved aliens that wanted Earth to send Godzilla to their planet). There were some weird films for the 1960s, and Gamera sure is one of them. It isn't exactly a good film by any means, but it sure proves a silly time for those who desire a kaiju film with that mix of exposition and payoff with a flaming turtle. It isn't too long either at 78 minutes (probably owing to Dalei's lingering doubt about this being a hit that meant a low budget), depending on exactly how one views its devil-may-care attitude to story depth. Oh yes, I forgot about the actors. Honestly, the only things that stick out from those moments spent explaining the methods of taking the monster down/looking for it involve a kid (Uchida) that is obsessed with the beast because he believes it is his friend (which he let out after being told by his parents that he is too obsessed with turtles and then rescued by Gamera after causing the circumstances to not just crush him in the first place). He may not be too wrong, since the next film turned Gamera into a more sympathetic creature, and it is from those films that he earned the nickname "the Friend of All Children". No one does awful here, so that isn't too weird. Truly, there are some strange times to be had with some of the lines from either version, beyond just asking about turtles in the Artic, such as one talking about ancient legends mentioning fire-eating turtles but finding it difficult to believe now, or one replying to someone drawing turtles by saying they drew girls when they were young (oh, and one character that thinks of the other as some sort of charm). They aren't really wooden, just kind of used as a means to an end. If you can believe it (and this is a movie full of that statement), they don't really take the monster down. Maybe they were planning a whole franchise in advance, because they resort to a plan that not even Godzilla tried: lure the monster to a rocket and send it to Mars! The whole world I guess can be comforted in the fact that they couldn't defeat a giant turtle with all their might, but they can lure it away instead like you would a possum. Gamera is a film of different perspectives in the sense that there are different versions of this film to watch. The first English-dubbed version was with "Gammera, the Invincible", released a year after the original that featured new footage with American actors that was usually included on a double bill. This film would also be edited for television by American International Television, and there exists public domain releases of those VHS/DVD releases. Two decades later, Sandy Frank (known for his syndication services in film and TV) acquired the film and four others to dub over (Mystery Science Theater 3000 would mock these versions in later years); this film, alongside all the others are also readily available in the video market (or one can settle for a shabbier version on the Internet). In any case, what we have here is a strange little movie, one that while obviously not holding a candle to Godzilla is at the very least an intriguing piece of cheese that set the stage for further adventures for all the right reasons.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

Doctor Zhivago.

Review #1421: Doctor Zhivago.

Cast: 
Omar Sharif (Dr. Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago), Julie Christie (Lara Antipova), Geraldine Chaplin (Tonya Gromeko), Rod Steiger (Victor Ippolitovich Komarovsky), Alec Guinness (Lieutenant General Yevgraf Andreyevich Zhivago), Tom Courtenay (Pavel "Pasha" Antipov / Strelnikov), Siobhán McKenna (Anna Gromeko), Ralph Richardson (Alexander Maximovich Gromeko), Rita Tushingham (Tanya Komarova), Jeffrey Rockland (Sasha), Bernard Kay (Kuril), and Klaus Kinski (Kostoyed Amoursky) Directed by David Lean (#286 - Lawrence of Arabia)

Review: 
"Secrets are what you confide to people in the dark. I think one of the things we've lost in the cinema is intimacy. Now you see appalling things happening and high excitement, but you rarely get right into people."

If one needed to view an epic drama or romance, one could find a great argument to be made for David Lean. He was born in England to Quaker parents; he had his first experience with watching cinema at thirteen, and receiving a Brownie camera as a gift from his uncle served as a good hobby for him. He found work as an apprentice in his father's accountancy firm, but he found himself more interested in the cinema, and this led to him joining Gaumont Studios in 1927. He served in various roles for the studio such as tea and clapper boy and eventually cutting room assistant. Over the next few years, he would become chief editor at Gaumont British News before shifting to editor on film in 1939. Three years later, playwright Noël Coward gave him a chance to direct with him with the war film In Which We Serve (1942), which served him well in directing further films (which he would do through forming Cineguild Productions with cinematographer Ronald Neame and producer Anthony Havelock-Allan, which lasted from 1944 to 1949), with his next six films being adaptation of plays and novels (three of them being works from Coward), which led to noted movies like Brief Encounter (1945) and Great Expectations (1946). A perfectionist with a tendency for autocratic behavior on set, Lean would make sixteen films in a career of 42 years, receiving plenty of attention for works such as Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), and Lawrence of Arabia (1962, which like this film was written by Robert Bolt), and his final work A Passage to India (1984, which he also wrote and edited).

The film was based on the 1957 novel of the same name by Boris Pasternak, a poet whose work is noted for its long and intricate structure that span over forty years against the backdrop of an evolving Russia in the 20th century (with the poet's views on said transition being the reason for the Soviet Union opposing its publication), and the controversy over the novel meant that it could not be filmed in Russia, with a majority of filming instead being in Spain. The film runs at 200 minutes (after an original length of 197 and a restoration that occurred in the late 1990s) with the intent of something intimately romantic and epic. How much the film accomplishes in that regard is up to the viewer, and there have been plenty who encountered it, since it ranks as one of the highest grossing films of its era (behind fellow 1965 film The Sound of Music), and this film won Academy Awards in art direction, cinematography, screenplay, costume design and score. All of this window-dressing for a film held n some ways as a classic is me trying to figure out exactly why the actual experience for me was just fine at best. Can it be possible to make something that has scope and ambition to tell a long story and yet seem lacking in making a romance epic whole? The words seem to be there, and there is plenty of interesting scenery and set design to go around with acting that is generally convincing, but it doesn't seem as great as it wants to portray itself. It has a sappy seductive power that can either sweep you off your feet or make you struggle to not roll your eyes in where it (theoretically) wants to go. Thrust into a title role is Sharif, an Egyptian actor of numerous British and American productions that had approached Lean about a supporting role but ended up being cast as the lead by Lean. His performance comes off decent, where his expressive eyes seem to try and hide a passive character that has bare chemistry with everything that happens to occur around him. Christie, a British actress who rose to prominence through films like this and Darling (1965), proves adept in generating passion through chemistry with Sharif that gradually builds to something halfway meaningful, a soap opera that mutates itself into trying to be taken seriously. Chaplin, a dancer-turned-model-turned actress in her English-language debut, can only do so much with a doormat type of character, one who generates far more interest in her kindness than the others who is doomed to be the first wheel to fall off the proverbial romantic vehicle. Of the whole cast, it is method icon of volatility in Steiger that proves most interesting, as he commands your attention with his intimidating nature that serves the film well in starting and ending things without becoming too much in blustering for the sake of it. It is nice to see Guinness from time to time, even when serving as a framing device for everything around him. Courtenay rounds things out with composed rebelliousness that serves him well from time to time.

There are tough choices to make for a film like this, and in some ways the film carries those dilemmas with a right touch and other times with a heavy-handed approach. It is like a piece of art that has plenty of color and lines but seems to be missing that central focus to bring it all completely together. It proves no wonder why no one has tried to make a second theatrical adaptation of this work: For one thing, television seems more adept in covering such an expansive work like this, and it might very well be folly to think one can top the highs generated by a film as iconic as this one is - regardless of how it might land for folks like me. It is immensely flawed, but it is nevertheless something to consider as a film for the 1960s worth pondering over, whether for its sweeping images or its gestures of romance that come together for a spectacle that can help lend inspiration to audiences then as before, if one has the patience and understanding for it.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.